Muddle Instead of Music

Muddle Instead of Music: On the Opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (Russian: Сумбур вместо музыки – Об опере «Леди Макбет Мценского уезда») is an editorial that appeared in the Soviet newspaper Pravda on January 28, 1936. The unsigned article condemned Dmitri Shostakovich's popular opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District as, among other labels, "formalist,” "bourgeois", "coarse" and "vulgar." Immediately after publication rumors began to circulate that Stalin had written the opinion. While this is unlikely, it is almost certain that Stalin was aware of and agreed with the article. "Muddle Instead of Music" was a turning point in Shostakovich's career and factored into his public withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony some months later. The article has since become a well-known example of Soviet censorship of the arts.

Leningrad composer Dmitri Shostakovich completed his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in 1932. Set in pre-revolutionary times, Lady Macbeth deals with themes of lust, loneliness and murder. Some of its scenes are sexually explicit; a review in the New York Sun called the opera "pornophony". On 24 January 1934 the work premiered to great success, lauded by critics and government officials. Lady Macbeth quickly spread to opera houses worldwide, cementing Shostakovich's status as an international celebrity. In the Soviet Union it received instant praise. The newspaper Sovetskoe iskusstvo honored Lady Macbeth as "a triumph of musical theatre", while Sovetskaya muzyka called it "the best Soviet work, the chef-d'oeuvre of Soviet creativity." Party officials were likewise pleased, extolling the opera and terming Shostakovich "a Soviet composer brought up in the best tradition of Soviet culture." In 1934 and 1935 the opera was performed several hundred times nationwide.

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