Search - Dmitry Shostakovich, Yuri Ahronovitch, Rome RAI Orchestra :: Shostakovich: Katerina Ismailova

A curiosity for Lady Macbeth fanciers

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 02/18/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is a Rome Radio broadxast of the revised Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which as of now has no studio recording in print. Western audiences haven't embraced Lady Macbeth exactly, although critics praise it and opera companies occasionally stage it. So there's not much call for a version that tones down the sex, satire, and depravity--those are the ingredients that sell the work. All the singers here, most of them Slavic except for Gloria Lane, who plays the lead role of Katerina, are convincing, as is the conducting. The sound is reasonably good FM-radio mono (unless my ears are fooling me--this could be narrow-focused stereo).



In the end, none of the leads quite measures up to those on the Rostropovich set of Lady Macbeth on EMI or Chung's on DG. But they come close, and if you have a passion for this opera, the milder, less biting Katerina Ismailova is worth a listen. It helps to know Russian since Opera d'Oro, as usual, gives no libretto and only the most cursory synopsis."

Mussorgsky on speed.

zaranda | Winnetka, CA United States | 02/28/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A wonderful performance. The "sanitized" Lady Macbeth of Mtinsk, supposedly a satire of bourgeois Czarist Russia banned after 2 years success, supposedly for squillant carnality and other failings vis-à-vis socialist realism. Stalin came late to it and apparently discerned what his lackeys couldn't: a manic festival of authority bashing; and he could easily have seen a not too subtle portrait of himself in the hypocritical father-in-law Boris--who is poisoned by Katerina.
The cast is generally excellent with the too rarely recorded Gloria Lane--still in robust voice--outstanding;Kari Nurmela alone, as Boris, is worth the price of the ticket. Only the Sergei (WIlliam Cochran) is a bit less than one might hope."