Free stream: Fearsome Lady Macbeth rises from the Rhine

How far may a person go to free themselves from dire circumstances? Here, a woman becomes a vile murderer, and yet the 26-year-old composer Shostakovich sympathises with her.  Of his own radically complex leading character, Shostakovich wrote: ‘Katerina may be a murderer but she’s no scumbag. I sympathise with her.’ With consistent musical brilliance, this grand, expressive score makes Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk a masterpiece of the 20th century; a mixture of tragic force and satire, full-blooded grotesque and harrowing realism that sugarcoats nothing and yet makes everything palpable. After Deutsche Oper am Rhein’s Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orleans,  director Elisabeth Stöppler and her team return to tell the story of another radically complex female character.  Izabela Matula sings the lead role and Sergey Polyakov sings  the role of Sergei.  Streamed  for Slippedisc’s readers courtesy of OperaVision.

The Plot:  Katerina Ismailova is wealthily married and lonely, her husband impotent and her father-in-law a tyrant. She is trapped in a world where merciless brutality, despotism and cruelty reign. The woman with a lust for life and love gives way to her raw longing for freedom when a new labourer Sergei starts working for the Ismailov family. She throws herself into a passionate affair with him and poisons her father-in-law’s food. But the increasing radicalism of her desire for self-determination will claim further victims…

Sung in Russian with subtitles in German and English.

Streamed Friday 28th March 2025  at 1900 CET / 1800 London / 1300 New York

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