Quote:
Originally Posted by grainger
When I was starting my undergraduate degree, sadly I had a strong dislike for all things opera. However, I loved Shostakovich (and still do). Lady MacBeth was the opera that got me listening to and liking opera in general.
It's so full of raw brutality, brooding, beauty, sarcasm, you name it ... I love it, especially if I'm in a bad mood. 
I have a recording of the original version of the opera. I've heard a suite of the interludes from Katerina Ismailova, the revised version he did in the '60s, but I haven't heard it in its entirety. Some of the interludes are quite different. |
Hi again Grainger,
Here is the episode two: a historical document of what happened when Joseph Stalin heared Dmitri Shostakovich's opera, "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk."
Stalin came to see and hear the opera, and left in incredible anger. On January 28, the headline "Chaos instead of Music" appeared in the "Pravda":
"Already from the first moment on, the listener's hearing ability is severely affected by the clumsy and totally confusing tone screams made on purpose. Fragments of melodies, embryos of musical episodes just drown, vanishing in a hell hole of squeaking and banging. To follow this 'music' is difficult;to remember it is impossible!"
This was the time when terror started to roar all around the nation. The cleaning processes now quickly increased in gigantic proportion. A new state within the state, "the Gulag," was created.
In this context, Stalin's warning to Shostakovich in the "Pravda" was: "This is like playing with fire, which could end very badly! A betrayal!"
Next week, a second article appeared in the "Pravda", this time about his ballet music that was about to be performed at the Bolschoi Theater. Shostakovich and everybody near him were sure that he was going to get arrested. So his friends now kept a distance. Like others at that time, he had a suitcase packed, ready to escape at any moment. The victims were always deported at night. Shostakovich didn't sleep, he was lying there, waiting in the dark...
Next episode: Shostakovich accused by Stalin of being an enemy of the people.