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Teatro Real, ''Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk''

Madrid

The original version of Šostakovič's opera, that the conductor Rostropovič wanted to be respected, foresaw that the scenography incorporated in its center the permanent presence of the orchestra.The idea to found the scenographies on the projections brought therefore to the project of a built scenography (above, left) that allowed to an orchestra of 85 musicians to be at the center of a stage action in which, thanks to connecting flights of steps, the action of the 16 protagonists, of the choir of 70 elements and other 13 actors in the mass-scenes, was enlivened.At the top on the right: the effect gotten by the juxtaposition of a projected fixed image (bottom left) with one in movement (bottom right).
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A big Screen for 3D projections realized with the special film PSS - Superscreen 3D.In the image, the protagonist Katerina with her lover Sergej.That of Katerina was the first one of a series of female portraits to which Šostakovic intended to devote a tetralogy, but the project stopped him to this first wedge.
The scenographer Tito Egurza and the Argentinian director Sergio Renán used few, minimal and realistic scene settings (a bed, a closet, and so on) that, with the unusual orchestra's position and the digital video-projections, provoke however the surreal effect sought by both of them.In fact, a declared source of inspiration of the design is Magritte.
Леди Макбет Мценского уезда (Lady Macbeth in the district of Mcensk), was represented for the first time to the Malyj Teatr of Leningrad January 22 nd 1934 and it got an immediate popular success that also had great echo in the official circles. Nevertheless, the innovative musical language of the opera and the audacity of some of the represented situations chilled a bit at a time the attitude towards the composer of the vertexes of the official hierarchies of the regime, despite Šostakovic actively participated in them.
In some scenes of the opera as that of this image and of the following, it is evident as the joined effect of projections, singers, choir and actors, is entirely turned to surround the orchestra.
Two years later, in January of 1936, the Pravda published the article Caos rather than music, signed by Ždanov, Stalin's censor, and Šostakovic was harshly accused of formalism and to have moved away from the ''socialist realism'', the only allowed artistic current. He fell therefore in misfortune, his incomes came almost wiped out and his Fourth symphony, just composed, had to be put away in a drawer, in which it remained up to 1961, when it was officially represented for the first time.
Šostakovic had therefore to return on his footsteps with the more conservative Fifth symphony, with which he conformed to the applications of the regime, and that remains in every case one of his most successful compositions. A recurrent mechanism in the life of Šostakovic, that had an extremely complex relationship with the Soviet regime: periodically banished with heavy accusations, he remained nevertheless its most popular official composer.
In Lady Macbeth they are quoted a bit of all the musical trends that had influence on Šostakovic, huge in synthesizing them: the avant-garde, the mahlerian romanticism, the atonal and the dodecaphony; and it can be found the presence of the strong contrasts and the ironic and grotesque elements that the modernity of its writing didn't disdain to use. The opera is centered on the character of Katerina, protagonist of some audacious scenes that, above all that of love with the worker Sergej in the first act, contributed to instigate the official sentence.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Opera in four acts and nine scenes
Music
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Libretto
Dmitri Shostakovich
Alexander Preys
from the homonym tale by Nikolaj Leskov
First night
Leningrad, Malij Teatr, 22/1/1934
Scenography,
light design,
multimedial projections
Tito Egurza (1941-2019)
Stage direction
Sergio Renán
Costume design
Renata Schussheim
Choreography
Leda Lojodice
Staging
Teatro Real of Madrid
Co-production with
Teatro San Carlo of Naples
Season
1999 / 2000
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