Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (opera)

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
Opera by Dmitri Shostakovich
A production of the Helikon Opera Moscow at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna in December 2014, with Svetlana Sozdateleva in the title role, staged by Dmitry Bertman
Native title	Russian: Леди Макбет Мценского уезда (Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda)
Librettist	Alexander Preys Shostakovich
Language	Russian
Based on	Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov
Premiere	22 January 1934 (1934-01-22) Leningrad Maly Operny

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (Russian: Леди Макбет Мценского уезда, or Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda) is an opera in four acts and nine scenes by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Opus 29. The libretto, jointly written by Alexander Preys and the composer, is based on the novel of the same name by Nikolai Leskov. (The opera is incorrectly named Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk on several commercial CD and DVD recordings.)

Dedicated by Shostakovich to his first wife, physicist Nina Varzar, the roughly 160-minute opera was first performed on 22 January 1934 at the Leningrad Maly Operny, and on 24 January 1934 in Moscow. It incorporates elements of expressionism and verismo, telling the story of a lonely woman in 19th-century Russia who falls in love with one of her husband's workers and is driven to murder.

Despite early success on popular and official levels, Lady Macbeth became the vehicle for a general denunciation of Shostakovich's music by the Communist Party in early 1936: after being condemned in an anonymous article (sometimes attributed to Joseph Stalin) in Pravda, it was famously banned in the Soviet Union for almost thirty years. Many people in fact know about the opera due to its place in the history of censorship.

The composer in 1962 revised Lady Macbeth, renaming it Katerina Izmailova (Russian: Катерина Измайлова) and assigning his Opus 114. He replaced two of its intermezzos, adjusted Act 1 Scene 3, and made smaller changes elsewhere. Katerina Izmailova was first performed on 26 December 1962 in Moscow at the Stanislavsky-Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre, and first given a studio recording in 1964. But since Shostakovich's death the original version has been more often performed.