Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth and the Limits of Early Soviet Feminism

• In Event: Feminine Histories and Identities in Russian and Ukrainian Music

Abstract

Shostakovich’s second opera, his last completed thanks to its removal from the Soviet stage after widespread criticism in Pravda and other papers in 1936, was an adaptation of Nikolai Leskov’s lurid tale of sex and murder in the Russian provinces. Reconstructing Leskov for the Soviet age, Shostakovich was determined to present the ‘evil’ antiheroine Katerina Izmailova as a positive character: a thwarted woman attempting to escape from the confines of her loveless arranged marriage. Despite the opera still being hailed as Shostakovich’s greatest masterpiece before Pravda ended his opera career, this paper argues that Lady Macbeth could not overcome the serious dramatic flaws that stemmed directly from Shostakovich’s own perspectives on sex and ‘feminine’ behaviour.

Author

• Pauline Fairclough, U of Bristol (UK)