Interview: Riccardo Chailly and director Vasily Barkhatov on Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk which opens La Scala’s opera season
On the 50th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s death, La Scala opens its opera Season with his masterpiece Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, based on the novella by Nikolai Leskov.
In the story, a young wife, Katerina, with the help of her lover, murders her husband and her father-in-law, but is eventually discovered and ends up committing suicide in Siberia, betrayed by everyone.
After its premiere in St Petersburg, the opera , which was intended to be the first part of a trilogy on women’s condition in Russia , became popular at home and abroad. Stalin attended a performance in Moscow in 1936; two days later, the famous denunciation titled “Chaos Instead of Music” appeared in Pravda, through which the regime blacklisted the opera and its composer.
Years later, Shostakovich prepared a new version that was staged in Moscow in 1963 under the title Katerina Izmailova, after theatre CEO Antonio Ghiringhelli had unsuccessfully tried to secure its premiere for La Scala.
Today, the theatre presents the original 1934 version, conducted by Riccardo Chailly and with the debut of director Vasily Barkhatov.
Riccardo Chailly’s relationship with Shostakovich’s operatic output dates back more than fifty years: “It all began in 1972, when I was 19. I had the privilege of attending rehearsals and performances of Shostakovich’s The Nose, conducted by Bruno Bartoletti and directed by Giacomo De Filippo. I was literally stunned for days. I was deeply struck by the modernity and the courage to tackle a text by Gogol in that way… Shostakovich hints at and inserts elements recognisable from Russian folk tradition, almost like a mosaic.”
In Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, this folk tradition coexists with an aspect linked to Central European music, as evidenced by a direct quotation in Katerina’s second aria in Act IV, which contains a clear reference to Abschied from Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, as Chailly points out: “Here Shostakovich needed to musically represent the total emptiness of a woman disappointed by everything, on the verge of utter despair, seeking the monstrous loss of herself by describing the final moods of an existence that is about to end.
“The grotesque nature of this work is shocking from the very first hearing. Just focus on the priest’s song after discovering that Boris has been poisoned by Katerina. The writing is reminiscent of operetta, with a completely different musical language, almost like a satirical tragedy, in which the idea of the grotesque prevails.”
Vasily Barkhatov makes his debut at La Scala with this production. The collaboration between musical direction and stage direction involved a thorough and in-depth study of the score, which began a long time ago: “This is my first collaboration with Riccardo Chailly. We first discussed the opera almost two years ago. Thanks to working with him, I was able to discover further interesting aspects of the score – it’s very cinematic, in which meticulous details are provided for the stage action, allowing us to represent the characters from a psychological point of view. We are watching and discussing everything together; it is a very close collaboration.
“[The score] oscillates between humour and cinematic tragedy, between the absurd, the realistic and violent tragedy. We do the same, trying to preserve the entire content of the score.”
And who is Katerina, in Barkhatov’s vision? “Katerina is committing a crime for her freedom and her identity, but it is still a crime. Let’s try to get inside her mind. Katerina needs to do this; she has no other way to escape, but when she becomes aware of Sergei’s betrayal in Siberia, she realises that she has committed nothing less than murder, she understands that she is a monster, she understands that she has done nothing good.”
A woman who, fighting for her identity, commits a heinous act. However, Barkhatov continues, “I don’t see her as crazy at all, but as a discontented and frustrated woman who took this love with Sergei to be something great.”
Since 2014, Russian director Vasily Barkhatov has collaborated extensively with major theatres across Western Europe. In 2021, he briefly returned to Russia to work at the Perm Opera, but left again following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.”
The opening night of the season – the same date every year – is 7 December.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
