Katerina Ismailova

Shostakovich' opera 'Lady Macbeth' of the Mtsensk District was with more than 200 performances very succesful in as well Russia as abroad. But in 1936 Stalin attended a performance and it was immediately condemned in an editorial in Pravda. The opera only reappeared, sanitised as 'Katerina Ismailova', long after Stalin's death, in 1962. The Suite from Katerina Ismailova consists of the entr'actes linking some of the scenes: these orchestral passages contribute to the dramatic momentum, giving an almost ciematic quality to the work's flow and develops in an symphonic character.