Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District

This seminal twentieth-century operatic masterpiece is a “tragedy-satire” of a wicked society desiring sexual dissipation. It is embodied by Katerina, a frustrated and oppressed housewife who resolves to kill people who might create difficulties for her. Shostakovich composed this progressive and dissonant work of brutal emotionality for instrumental solos, choirs and intermezzos. At first the opera was hugely successful, with 180 repeat performances; however, in the period of the Great Terror the composer was condemned in the anonymous article Muddle Instead of Music (1936) and the opera was not performed again until the 1960s.