When Shostakovich’s searing opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was denounced in the pages of Pravda in early 1936, it was derided as “coarse and vulgar” with music that “quacks, grunts and growls”. A new production at the Prague State Opera revels in those elements, to great effect. Czech director Martin Čičvák and German conductor Hermann Bäumer embrace the tawdry plot and radical music with a devotion and intelligence that make for a gripping evening of sex, violence and moral decay.
While it may have shocked Communist officials at the time (though not Soviet audiences, which responded enthusiastically until Lady Macbeth was banned), from this vantage point the story of a desperate woman who turns to murder to escape her humdrum life has familiar contours. A scheming femme fatale, double homicide, bleak moral landscape, feeling of impending doom – those are all characteristic of film noir. Though that did not emerge as a genre until the 1940s, it provides a perfect framework for this production, with dark sets, pervasive brutality and much of the action projected in a live black-and-white video at the rear of the stage. The video adds a cinematic dimension to the production and, by offering views not always visible from the audience, creates a disturbing sense of an omniscient, inexorable fate.
The centerpiece of Hans Hoffer's hard-edged metal, glass and wood-block set is a tall, open framework for what is essentially a two-level, see-through lift. The upper “room” is Katerina’s bedroom, where assault, adultery and the murder of her husband, Zinovy, play out under harsh lighting. The lower room serves an ever-shifting set of functions, from the kitchen where Katerina fights off an attempted rape by her father-in-law Boris to the wine cellar where Katerina and her lover Sergey hide Zinovy’s body. It periodically descends below stage level, re-emerging with something unexpected – like the large brass ensemble playing the violent music that accompanies Katerina and Sergey in flagrante delicto. Short of naked bodies, there are no holds barred in portraying the sadistic sex that runs through the opera, but even in that context the effect is jarring, a sonic siren that heightens the depravity.
Lady Macbeth is not unrelentingly nihilistic. There are moments of grim humor, political satire and witty commentary that Čičvák and Bäumer highlight as part of a tight mosaic. Čičvák is very sharp in his depiction of the police as corrupt simpletons in a set-piece in the third act, and he gives Jaroslav Březina plenty of room for a comic portrayal of the drunk who discovers Zinovy’s body. Another nice touch: Březina being swept aside by Katerina and Sergey’s wedding party, a shabby, ignored peasant who is about to bring down all the careful planning and shatter the celebration.
Bäumer’s command of the many incisive, innovative nuances in the score is even better. Brass that laughs at Boris’s suggestion that Zinovy order his wife to be obedient, a short blast of patriotic music when “the great writer Gogol” is mentioned, musical climaxes that mirror sexual climaxes – all rendered with aplomb, never overbearing, a sly complement to the action onstage. One of the Communist complaints was about the “violence” in the score, which in Bäumer’s taut interpretation is a masterful rendering of not just individual sins, but the entire social fabric being ripped to shreds.
In the title role, Alžběta Poláčková gave new meaning to the word “trouper”. Physically abused for most of the evening, she still managed tender, wronged-woman arias in the final act that evoked sympathy for an entirely unsympathetic character. František Zahradníček dominated the stage as Boris, wielding a whip that matched his terrifying manner and voice. Denys Pivnickij was less convincing as Sergey, and Josef Moravec offered only a meek Zinovy. Making the most of small parts, Jan Hnyk was an amusingly cynical police sergeant, and Peter Mikuláš a convincing political prisoner.
The sturdy State Opera Chorus outdid itself, in particular with powerful performances at the wedding celebration and in the prison camp. And for once the choreography, by Silvia Beláková, supported rather than distracted from the narrative, maintaining a writhing undercurrent of beleaguered laborers.
After its inauspicious start, Lady Macbeth went on to become a world classic. Russia, alas, has gone full-circle in censorship and repression. The Bolshoi offers only Katerina Izmailova, the watered-down revision that Shostakovich wrote many years later. All the more reason to see the original done properly in Prague, where the brilliance of the composer before he was forced to censor himself is on vivid, haunting display.
