LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK • BERLIN
★★★★★★
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
REVIEW LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK: DISGUSTING, BRUTAL, FANTASTIC!
Barrie Kosky’s current Berlin staging of Shostakovich’s scandalous opera from 1934 is a disgustingly brutal, hideous examination of human nature – and a fantastic opera experience.
The stage at the Komische Oper is reduced to a grey, almost empty concrete landscape with no clear distinction between inside and outside, private and public. Loose tables, chairs and a long bench are among the few props, and in the final act, the space is transformed by a cold, almost clinical light reminiscent of a parking garage or a prison yard without a horizon.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
A staging that lifts the opera out of a predictable “Russian color” and instead turns the characters into bodies in any oppressive system that produces violence and humiliation.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
At its premiere in 1934, the opera was an instant success and reached several hundred performances before Stalin decided to see it in Moscow. The work did not please the dictator, who described it as ‘confusion instead of music’.
Shortly afterwards, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was pilloried in Pravda, the newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Two years later, the opera had disappeared from the repertoire.
The political punishment still sticks to the work, which is basically a tragic-satirical love story about a woman who ends up murdering for love and has to pay the price.
A raw, funny, and brutal piece of modernist musical drama in its depiction of violence, sexuality, and social decay in Russian provincial life.
The title character’s real name is Katerina Izmailova, and her “Macbeth” has little to do with either Verdi or Shakespeare. She is trapped in a loveless marriage and subject to a sadistic father-in-law. Her problems accelerate when, in desperation, she begins a relationship with Sergei, who is far from the image of Mr Nice Guy.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Shostakovich’s music follows her psychology from ecstatic, chaotic outbursts of wild percussion and shrill brass to a final state characterised by emptiness and resignation, often carried by beautiful, lyrical string sequences.
The violence is relentless. The men are brutal, the authorities ridiculous, the collective cruel, the laughter dirty.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Kosky makes no secret of his penchant for grotesque humour, which permeates the moral decay. Sex and violence are insistently present, closely linked to Shostakovich’s score. The “noise” should be listened to as articulated sound with sharp rhythms and clear emotional colours.
Brutal passages stand side by side with sparse, surprisingly warm moments, where the music comments on the harsh scenes with a kind of melancholic distance.
The performance is tough stuff, challenging and enriching its audience with a strong, indelible artistic impression.
Six stars from GOT TO SEE THIS
