Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.We have Stalin to blame for Shostakovich’s failure to write more operas. After Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk had its premiere in Leningrad in 1934, the opera was officially denounced as “Muddle instead of Music” and banned for the best part of three decades, when it was revised as Katerina Ismailova.How much did we lose? The original Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk makes a knockout evening in the theatre. It has gruesomely black comedy, soaring love music, biting satire and some of the most sensational orchestral interludes ever heard in the opera-house. It is also dramatically enthralling.This recording comes from live performances at Boston’s Symphony Hall in January last year. It forms part of an exhaustive project for the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death, which has seen Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra perform and record all the composer’s symphonies, concertos and sundry orchestral works.An appreciable cast has been assembled. Kristine Opolais lets out some wild notes at times, but that is par for the course in the fearsome title-role. Brenden Gunnell makes a vocally muscular Sergei, her lover, and Peter Hoare and Günther Groissböck are vivid as her husband Zinovy and his father, both soon joining the opera’s pile of corpses.Nelsons leads a well-played performance with some fine solo playing, but do not forget the first-ever recording of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich. That is truly feral. Nelsons and co sometimes seem tame by comparison.★★★★☆‘Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’ is released by DG
