Metropolitan Opera · 2022–23 season

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Dmitri Shostakovich

Friday, October 7, 2022

The story

Bored housewife causes havoc.

The hero's fate

Murder-suicide (drowns)

The cast

Katerina IsmailovaSoprano Svetlana Sozdateleva^* Replaced the originally announced Eva-Maria Westbroek
SergeiTenor Brandon Jovanovich^*
Zinovy IsmailovTenor Nikolai Schukoff^*
Boris IsmailovBass-baritone John Relyea^*

* Cast for the run; a cover may have sung this night.

The production

Conductor: Keri-Lynn Wilson
Director: Graham Vick
Production: 1994
Length: 2 h 40 min

The opera

Premiere: 1934
Libretto: Dmitri Shostakovich & Alexander Preys
Language: Russian

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Op. 29 (Russian: Леди Макбет Мценского уезда, romanized: Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda, lit. 'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District'), is an opera in four acts and nine scenes by Dmitri Shostakovich. The libretto, jointly written by Alexander Preis and the composer, is based on the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov.

Dedicated by Shostakovich to his first wife, the physicist Nina Varzar, the opera was first performed on 22 January 1934 at the Leningrad Maly Operny Theatre, and received its Moscow premiere two days later. It combines elements of expressionism and verismo, telling the story of Katerina Izmailova, a lonely woman in 19th-century Russia who falls in love with one of her husband's workers and becomes involved in a sequence of murders.

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