‘In these parts, one occasionally comes across individuals of such character that, no matter how many years have passed, one cannot recall them without experiencing an inward tremor.’ So begins Nikolai Leskov’s exquisitely crafted yet harrowing 1865 novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. There are operas, too, that it’s difficult to recall without an inward tremor; none more so than the ‘tragedy-satire’ which the young Dmitri Shostakovich created out of this same Leskov novella. The opera caused a sensation at its premiere and was soon playing to packed houses in Leningrad and Moscow. Then, in January 1936, the great Leader and Teacher saw it and the show hit the buffers. ‘Before Stalin saw it,’ Shostakovich recalled, ‘I was a boy who needed a good spanking. Afterwards, I was a state criminal.’ Things were never the same again. As David Fanning remarked in his programme essay for Andreas Kriegenburg’s superlative...
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