Katerina (Lady Macbeth) masturbates at her loneliness in her prison-like home.
https://www.asopera.fr/en/productions/3530-lady-macbeth-de-mzensk.html
Venue: Opéra Bastille (Paris, France)
Production date: 2019
Duration: 2 h 58 min
Production: © Opéra national de Paris - Telmondis - Mezzo

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I cracked my eyebrow open yesterday in Michigan Theatre -- now I have a scar on my forehead. Come on! FYI, I was watching Barbie. When I was trying to exit to the bathroom in the middle of the movie, I fell on a stair and hit my head in the dark. Before I felt anything, there was blood on my face. I immediately uberred to Urgent Care.

But that is not what I want to talk about in this article -- no sham feminism, sorry. Earlier this year, I switched the color of my profile page from pink to green as soon as I heard that Barbie will be overwhelmingly pink. Now I hope I could be associated with a more gender neutral color that dissociates me from Barbie. Of course I am a bit uncomfortable about the fact that I failed to escape the movie and even get hurt. Metaphorically speaking, my scar is a failure of an anti-Barbie belief. Maybe next time I wouldn’t have been in such a stupid rush and instead walk out of the stereotypical movie without hitting my head right at the exit. Is it possible to get out without paying the price?

Maybe not.

Today I want to introduce a jawdropping opera -- Dimitri Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

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Speaking of operas, it is a genre that I have the least interest in. I sometimes feel ashamed to admit that I have never ever finished any Wagner opera, not to say the entire Ring cycle. Although, for my freshman year opera class at Northeastern, I did mildly associate myself with the Tristan for my final paper. Except that I only listened to the Tristan prelude in the first act and the finale in the final act, not the entire 4-hour thing.

So, how comes a non-opera person wants to propagate an opera today? Because it is good. Good as in the storyline, the production, and the performance.

I love this opera even though I hate Shostakovich’s music. Shostakovich’s music has everything to do with the reality that he is situated in. His music tends to portray fear, a dominant theme in autocracy. Tributary themes include suppression, repression, twisted mania, and despair. Whereas I always see music as an escape to happier realities. What Shostakovich documents is against human flourishing. But it doesn’t hurt that we take it as a thriller. Our aesthetic experience, in this case, will be riven with uncomfortableness.

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This rendition is quite extraordinary. Every visual, vocal, instrumental aspect of this opera is almost impeccable. Every single unit on the stage and on the backstage has coordinated so perfectly with each other.

The storyline is about once upon a time a married and sexually unfulfilled Lady Macbeth seeks alternative pleasure in a man other than her husband, of both whom she later murders.

The specific plots are quite complicated. They unravel a new level of understanding each time it introduces a new plot. The perks within include:

(1.1) the married Katerina chronically lives without the company of her husband Zinovy. Her basic sexual needs are not met;

The woman’s needs are not satisfied.
https://palaceoperaandballet.com.au/production/lady-macbeth-of-mtsensk

(1.2) she instead lives with her father-in-law named Boris, a merchant who owns a meat factory, acts like a dictator, and surveils her life;

What an ensemble in the back! Myriads of workers in the same uniform
https://fracinema.com/en/catalogue/lady-macbeth-mtsensk

(1.4) she starts to seek solace outside home;

(1.5) a hippy boy (as always!) who works at the meat factory named Sergei starts to seduce her;

The house of the butcher.
https://www.operaworld.es/lady-macbeth-del-distrito-de-mtsensk-magnifico-warlikowski-en-paris/

(1.6) Katerina and Sergei are caught by Boris while they are having sex;

(1.7) Katerina poisons Boris in his dinner mushroom plate;

https://www.medici.tv/en/operas/lady-macbeth-mtsensk-opera-de-paris-2019

The quirky, yellow-beard priest looks like a Chinese Daoist (?)
https://fracinema.com/en/catalogue/lady-macbeth-mtsensk

(1.8) When finally Zinovy (casted as a blond-hair and Trump-like) returns to the town, he catches Katerina and Sergei together;

(1.9) Sergei conspires with Katerina and kills Zinovy; as always, what to do with the body??

A metamorphosis: Katerina changes from a glaringly green dress to a black suit.
medici.tv

(1.10) They eventually hide the corpse of her husband in the back of the warehouse;

(2.1) but Sergei soon gets bored with her -- a case of Anna Karenina?

(2.2) Sergei’s other girlfriend reminds him of the inheritance of Katerina;

(2.3) Sergei nonetheless marries Katerina;

(2.4) Meanwhile, Katerina starts to have hallucinations about the ghost of her father-in-law chasing her in reality;

(2.5) In her wedding ceremony, Katerina transforms from black to red;

Katerina’s short black hair also metamorphosizes.
https://palaceoperaandballet.com.au/production/lady-macbeth-of-mtsensk

(2.6) The police comes to find the corpse back in the warehouse;

(2.7) Katerina and Sergei are caught and exiled to the gulags in Siberia.

https://palaceoperaandballet.com.au/production/lady-macbeth-of-mtsensk

Inmate Katerina.
https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/fatal-passion-in-the-parisian-spring

(3.1) Katerina feel further humiliated when she finds out Sergei betrays her with one of her inmates.

(3.2) Katerina tries to drown her love nemesis.

(3.3) Katerina accidentally drowns herself.

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I summarize 3 major interpretations for this opera:

a. A revenge story in the lineage of Medea

b. A tragedy on the fleetingness of love

c. A peek into the life in USSR

I find it interesting that the gulag scene is comparably short to the extent of omission. Not everyone in the gulag can live to tell the tales. Or Shostakovich tries to maintain the last bit of mystery for Stalin -- we all know what happens later. Stalin left the opera without finishing the entire performance. Shostakovich receives an editorial from a party official, who “disappears” the opera overnight, “(the opera) tickling the perverted taste of the bourgeoisie with its fidgety, screaming neurotic music."

The thunderstorm just stopped. No better weather to write.

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

“Roter Himmel”

The Faust Analogy