Opera: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk English National Opera

 

CHOOSING a 20th century Russian composer to kick off its 2015-16 season may seem strange for an opera house that is trying to balance its books and attract a wider audience.

But the new ENO director of music and principal conductor Mark Wigglesworth has a very high reputation for his interpretations of Shostakovich and anyone seeing and hearing this production will realise why.

I doubt that I have ever heard such a gloriously powerful sound ringing out through the Coliseum, nor an orcheStra so effectively playing their part in telling the story.

The tale is one of lust and violence in the workplace. Katerina Ismailova, beautifully sung and powerfully acted by the American soprano Patricia Racette, is the bored wife of a Russian factory owner. When her husband goes on a business trip, she takes as a lover the brutal and misogynistic Sergei (excellently portrayed by John Danszak) and the energy and intensity of their illicit offstage sexual encounters is brilliantly captured in Shostakovich's raucous music.

Perhaps that was the part that Stalin so strongly objected to, or perhaps it was the story's portrayal of sex and violence in the workplace, contrary to good Soviet dialectics. In any case Stalin's denunciation of the piece led to severe problems for the composer for some years.
For that reason, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk took some time to become established, but it is now regarded as one of the great operas of the 20th century. Hearing this vigorous production at the ENO shows why.
Sadly, however, the production, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, does not match the brilliance of the music. Choosing to present it in modern dress takes a good deal away from the historical Russian workplace atmosphere, and rather too often the action on the stage is unnecessarily vulgar.

The translation of the libretto (originally in Russian, of course) is also occasionally clumsy, with attempts to introduce humour into the language by the use of swear words more often than not falling flat and inducing linguistic embarrassment rather than smiles.

Five stars for Wigglesworth and the orchestra, four stars for the singers, three stars for the production. That averages out at exactly four.

 I doubt that I have ever heard such a gloriously powerful sound ringing out through the Coliseum