Lady Macbeth de Mzensk

Lady Macbeth of Mzensk Dmitri Shostakovich Opéra Bastille Duration: 3 hours 25 minutes with 1 intermission Language: Russian Subtitles: French / English Like a Russian Madame Bovary, Katerina is bored in the company of her husband.

The arrival of a new employee, Sergei, leads her into adultery and then crime, making her more akin to Lady Macbeth. But unlike Shakespeare's character, Katerina acts not out of a taste for power but to satisfy impulses stifled by a sordid environment.

Created in 1934 in Leningrad when Dmitri Shostakovich was only 28 years old, Lady Macbeth of Mzensk enjoyed a triumph that led to the composer's downfall.

Finding this controversial opera contrary to 'socialist realism', Stalin threatened the composer with deportation and the work was banned for more than 25 years before reappearing in a toned-down version.

Given in its original version, Shostakovich's powerful and tense score is reinforced by Krzysztof Warlikowski's staging. By placing the characters in a slaughterhouse, he restores to this 20th-century masterpiece its unrelenting crudeness.

Ingo Metzmacher Musical Direction Krzysztof Warlikowski, Stage Direction and Costumes Aušrinė Stundytė Katerina Lvovna Ismaylova Pavel Černoch Sergei Dmitry Ulyanov Boris Timofeevitch Ismaylov Oleksiy Palchykov Zinovy Borisovitch Ismaïlov Ekaterina Sannikova Aksinia Marcel Beekman The Slovenly Sweeper Victoria Karkacheva Sonetka Michael Colvin The Schoolteacher Margarita Polonskaya The Bagwoman Dmitry Belosselskiy The Police Chief, the Old Convict Vartan Gabrielian An Officer Orchestra and Choirs of the Paris National Opera