TORONTO - So have you heard the tawdry tale of the little minx from Mtsensk? Whether you have or not, it's a tale that's bound to be much discussed here in Toronto for the foreseeable future as patrons flock to see the Canadian Opera Company's new production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. It opened on the stage of the Four Seasons Centre on Wednesday and will play through Feb.
23. Of course, some of those discussions will no doubt feature hushed, perhaps even disapproving, comment on the blatant and unapologetic sexuality that director Paul Curran and Kevin Knight mine from the tale, but it is the monumental, often awe-inspiring beauty of Dmitry Shostakovich's score that will no doubt feature even more prominently. Seems that, even though it found favour with the Russian audience of the time, it coincidentally enraged Joseph Stalin, which could be not so much a career-limiting move as a life-limiting move.
The lady in question is Katerina (sung here by soprano Nicola Beller Carbone) and as the curtain goes up on Curran's production, she's obviously a desperately bored housewife of the Russian persuasion. She is ignored by her inept husband Zinovy (tenor Vadim Zapletchny) and tormented by her loutish father-in-law, Boris (baritone Timothy Noble), who blames her and not his apparently impotent son for the lack of an heir. But on the day that Zinovy is called away, Katerina falls under the spell of the swaggering Sergey (tenor Oleg Balashov), an opportunist and womanizer just come to town.
Having found love -- or at least an exciting facsimile thereof -- Katerina is not about to let it go, and when Boris discovers Sergey leaving his daughter-in-law's room and threatens to tell her husband, Katerina takes the first step down a murderous road that will ultimately cost her not only her marriage, but her sanity, her lifestyle and then her very life itself. In spinning out the tale and in bringing it to life, neither composer nor director seem too concerned with the kind of grand passions around which operatic stories usually pivot, contenting themselves with a celebration (for lack of a better word) of a much more ordinary (if no less compelling) side of human sexuality -- one that's clearly driven as much by hormones as by heart. It is a down 'n' dirty world, perfectly evoked by designer Knight's drab Soviet vision, only rarely enlivened by violent splashes of colour.
From a performance point of view, there is fine work indeed from the lovely Carbone, as well as from Noble and Balashov and a supporting cast that includes mezzo Buffy Baggott, basses Robert Pomakov and Pavel Daniluk, tenor Hubert Francis, baritone Cornelis Opthof, soprano Melinda Delorme and the sublime COC Chorus. But finally, as brutal, raw and compelling as the story is, it is the music, as served up under the baton of Richard Bradshaw, that carries this opera aloft, underscoring everything from the tedium to the joy and sorrow of everyday life, giving voice to baser passions in the name of a greater humanity. We are told that Shostakovich originally planned this to be the first in a cycle of operas about Russian women, and this production proves conclusively that the fact that he stopped with this one is simply another crime to be laid squarely at the feet of Stalin.
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