tomekkobialka | LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK (Shostakovich) - Act I Intermezzo and Scene 3 (Orchestral Reduction) @tomekkobialka | Uploaded August 2019 | Updated October 2024, 1 week ago.
pf: Mstislav Rostropovich cond/ London Philharmonic Orchestra

Galina Vishnevskaya: Katerina Lvovna Ismailova
Nicolai Gedda: Sergey
Dimiter Petkov: Dimiter Petkov

0:00 - Act I Intermezzo No.2
1:57 - Act I Scene 3

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (Russian: Леди Макбет Мценского уезда, or Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda) is an opera in four acts and nine scenes by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Opus 29. The libretto, jointly written by Alexander Preys and the composer, is based on the novel of the same name by Nikolai Leskov. (The opera is generally translated in English as Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.)

Dedicated by Shostakovich to his first wife, physicist Nina Varzar, the roughly 160-minute opera was first performed on 22 January 1934 at the Leningrad Maly Operny, and on 24 January 1934 in Moscow. It incorporates elements of expressionism and verismo, telling the story of a lonely woman in 19th-century Russia who falls in love with one of her husband's workers and is driven to murder.

Despite early success on popular and official levels, Lady Macbeth became the vehicle for a general denunciation of Shostakovich's music by the Communist Party in early 1936: after being condemned in an anonymous article (sometimes attributed to Joseph Stalin) in Pravda, titled "Muddle Instead of Music", it was famously banned in the Soviet Union for almost thirty years, until 1961.

The composer in 1962 revised Lady Macbeth, renaming it Katerina Izmailova (Russian: Катерина Измайлова) and assigning his Opus 114. He replaced two of its intermezzos, adjusted Act 1 Scene 3, and made smaller changes elsewhere. Katerina Izmailova was first performed on 26 December 1962 in Moscow at the Stanislavsky-Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre, and first given a studio recording in 1964. But since Shostakovich's death the original version has been more often performed. The original uncensored version was not performed again in Russia until 2000. Despite the opera's difficult history of censorship, the work has entered the standard repertory, in 2017-18 being the fourth most-produced Russian opera, and 54th most produced opera overall worldwide.

(Source: Wikipedia)

NOTE: Shostakovich left out the rape sequence from the Act 1 Finale when he revised the opera in 1962, instead replacing it with beating drums. I guess he retrospectively found it in poor taste, and while I'm inclined to agree, from a purely musical point of view I don't think there's anything quite like it out there (at least not in classical music!)