Word: shostakoviches
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...Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth is a top modern opera...
...another candidate must be added to that list: Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which resurfaced last week in San Francisco. The composer's second and last opera - his first was the bitingly satirical The Nose (1928), based on a story by Gogol - has had a checkered history. Completed in 1932, hailed as a major achievement at its premiere in 1934, condemned by Stalin in 1936 and sanitized 20 years later as Katerina Ismailova, the opera electrified its first audiences in both Russia and the West with its sexual frankness. One early critic, referring to the lascivious...
...When Shostakovich revised the opera in 1956, he toned down the eroticism of both the music and the text (based on Nikolai Leskov's 1865 story). It was essentially the same work that had fallen afoul of Pravda, but noticeably missing were the trombone slides, the most literal music depiction of sexual intercourse since the famous interrupted climax in Act II of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and the lusty horn whoops in the prelude to Der Rosenkavalier...
There is no doubt that some of Shostakovich's revisions-the smoothing out of the occasionally jagged vocal lines, the more polished transitions between scenes, the improved thematic development-represent the mature second thoughts of a composer who had already completed ten of the 15 symphonies he was eventually to write. But as a rule, first impulses tend to be more vital and visceral: Hindemith's first version of Cardillac, for example, or Verdi's original Don Carlos. The same is true of Lady Macbeth. As staged by the enterprising San Francisco Opera, which gave Katerina Ismailova...
Unreal or not, people are now bowling to the Beatles, Frisbeeing while learning French, skiing to Shostakovich and jogging to Jagger. The thin wires of the headsets uncoil from Brooks Brothers blazers and Gucci bags, as well as from bib overalls and warmup suits. Commuters, pitchers in bull pens, shoppers hovering over the meat counter and sunbathers soaking up rays are tuning in by the millions. In Houston, prospective buyers of the Sony Walkman, the original device that touched off the craze last year, must sign up for at least a 60-day wait at major audio outlets...