Study Questions for Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District

Read the libretto carefully before you go to see the film. Know what you think is going to happen before you see how Kušej, the director, presents it to you. Try to form a picture in your own mind of how it will look—and, like with the assignment for Midsummer Night’s Dream—how you would stage it. Compare your vision with the vision that Kušej presents you.

1. In the program notes for the production of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the director, Martin Kušej explains why he has staged the opera in a specific fashion. He writes: “Orgasm and Murder are two diametrically opposed poles, two extreme amplitudes of love and hate, the two fundamental relationships between human beings. This climactic and yet unfathomably deep essence of human behaviour is the linchpin of my production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

What interests me most in this opera is the entire complex of Eros and sexuality when it is put under pressure from power and dependency structures; a special form of powerlessness, repressed aggression and criminal energy is then created. Lady Macbeth has nothing in common with a romantic story of love and murder. It is a tragedy that arouses little pity and no fear: there is no catharsis. The characters are perpetrators just as much as they are victims, for violent circumstances lead to violent reactions. The darkening of the world is depicted as an unstoppable process; sudden outbursts of despair are representative of the lust for blood and of sexual desire. We experience eroticism depicted in coarse language and brutal images, angry intrigues, the animal power of emotions and the vicious circle of isolation.”

Do you agree with Kušej that this is what Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is about? Do you think his staging decisions communicate the interpretation that he draws out of the music and libretto? Do you have a different interpretation? How would a different staging communicate a different meaning?

2. Shostakovich intended for Katerina to be a sympathetic character. Do you think she comes across as sympathetic in the production video that you saw? How would you alter the staging to make her sympathetic?
3. Kušej, the director of the video production of the opera that you’ve seen, places the action in a kind of unspecific present and in no particular place. It could be anywhere. The last act—which Shostakovich and Leskov, who wrote the short story on which the libretto is based—was set in Siberia. In the version, it looks more like hell than the snow-covered steppes of Siberia. What do you think of Kušej’s decision to give the opera a universal meaning? If you wanted to set it specifically in Russia, how would you do that? What different sorts of staging decisions would you make? Can you be true to Shostakovich’s opera and stage it the way that Kušej does?
4. Some critics have interpreted Katerina as a feminist. Can you find any evidence in the libretto or music for this interpretation?
5. Why do you think Katerina stays with Sergey?
6. List four reasons that Pravda gives for its dramatic denunciation of Shostakovich and his opera. Do you agree with any of the criticisms the article raises?