Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

The Composer - Dmitri Shostakovich

Born September 25, 1906 – Died August 9, 1975

Dmitri Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg on September 25, 1906. His father was an engineer, and his mother, a professional pianist, was his first teacher. He continued to study piano at the Petrograd Conservatory, where one of his composition teachers was Glazunov. Although he received an honorable mention in the 1927 International Chopin Piano Competition, he made no further attempt to pursue a career as a pianist, having already established himself as a composer with his Symphony No. 1, written as a graduation piece. The decade following the Revolution was one of comparative artistic freedom in the Soviet Union. Stravinsky, Berg, Bartók and Hindemith were major influences on Shostakovich, who attempted to express both modern idioms and socialist fervor.

In the late 1920s he became involved in dramatic music, composing for film (New Babylon), ballet (The Golden Age) and theater (The Flea), and his first opera, The Nose. He began to compose Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in 1930, and the opera premiered in 1934 in Leningrad and Moscow, and was perceived as a triumph of Marxist art.

It was not until Stalin's infamous night at the opera in 1936 and the vicious attack on Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in Pravda that an abrupt change in Soviet policy was revealed. The Union of Soviet Composers, of which Shostakovich was a member, rapidly revised its policies, and Shostakovich's next major work, his Fifth Symphony, reinstated Shostakovich as the major Soviet composer of his generation. He received further affirmation with the award of the Stalin Prize for his piano quintet in 1940.

Hitler's invasion of the USSR and Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, begun in Leningrad and dedicated to its heroic citizens, established Shostakovich as a symbol of resistance against Nazism. The score was microfilmed and flown to the USA where Toscanini conducted a live radio performance with the NBC Symphony Orchestra for millions of listeners in 1942.

After the war, ideological controls were tightened, and both Shostakovich and Prokofiev were among the composers singled out for harsh criticism in a 1948 statement by the Union of Soviet Composers. Shostakovich's teaching positions at the Leningrad and Moscow Conservatory were terminated during this time. It was not until Stalin's death in 1953 that a gradual liberalization began. Shostakovich, now the undisputed leader of Russian composers (his rival Prokofiev had died the same year as Stalin) continued to create within the loosening guidelines of socialist realism. Some works, such as his 11th and 12th Symphonies, written respectively for the 40th anniversary of the Revolution and in honor of the memory of Lenin, were traditional Communist Party pleasers, and dismissed as inferior by western critics.

In 1962, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13, Babi Yar, based on poems by the young Yevtushenko premiered; the condemnation of anti-semitism in the text produced some criticism in Soviet circles. In the same year, Shostakovich revised Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk now renamed Katerina Izmaylova.

In 1966 heart disease and severe arthritis weakened Shostakovich's health, but his productivity continued until his death in Moscow on August 9, 1975. His legacy includes fifteen symphonies, fifteen string quartets, two violin, two cello and two piano concertos, two piano sonatas and the 24 Preludes and Fugues, as well as choral works, ballet music and film scores.

JANET MULLANY

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