Sergej takes Katerina abruptly, in her designer shower. This relationship was never really about female pleasure. The brutality of the act can be heard with graphic precision in the orchestra. Elisabeth Stöppler’s new production of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth von Mzensk (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf takes as its starting point the numbing violence to which all of the characters have been subjected. These are traumatised people, and cruelty is all they have ever known.
It is not clear quite what the Ismailov family business is in Stöppler’s updated version of Shostakovich’s tale of misery and murder. Employees wear matching black overalls, and sometimes (more perplexingly) stockings over their heads; the house (sets: Annika Haller) is new Russian meets Ikea, all sterile white and built-in appliances. Katerina’s predicament — stuck in an unfulfilling marriage, with a sleazy bully of a father-in-law breathing down her neck — is relatively timeless. Stöppler draws her characters with wonderful attention to detail and consummate musicality. A handful of minor figures are given expanded roles, lurking in corners and keeping an eye on proceedings with sinister intent. By the time Katerina feeds her father-in-law rat poison, we are entirely on her side; the murder of her husband seems inevitable.
When the new couple are caught and punished, the shift in pace from oppressive domesticity to the Siberian steppes is one that challenges most directors. Stöppler and her team opt for a fever-dream, finishing with the entire chorus in identical red dresses. The shift began earlier, at Sergej and Katerina’s fraught wedding, where the pair wear bizarre naked doll costumes and are married by a priest dressed in a white Balenciaga-style puffer jacket (costumes: Su Sigmund). It is too much.
But all the work’s extravagant pathos, biting wit and clever parody are abundantly present in the orchestra pit. Vitali Alekseenok draws superb playing from the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, and keeps balance perfect, carrying his singers with the utmost care. He also knows how to manage both the work’s extremes and its velocity; he is a storyteller, keeping us spellbound.
And the cast is uniformly excellent. Izabela Matula’s Lady Macbeth has everything — repressed sensuality, yearning, frustration, strength and vulnerability. Her Sergej, Sergey Polyakov, is also the perfect mix of hapless aspiration and toxic masculinity, a robust tenor with an effortless physical self-assurance. Andreas Bauer Kanabas makes a towering, skin-crawlingly slimy Boris, a father-in-law with the depths of a true Russian bass.
In all, this is a solid account of a knotty opera, worth a visit if you are in the area.
★★★★☆
To April 18, operamrhein.de