Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District

Katerina Ismailova, trapped in a stifling marriage to a provincial merchant, begins a passionate affair with the worker Sergei. When her tyrannical father-in-law discovers the affair, Katerina poisons him; when her husband returns, she and Sergei murder him too. Convicted and sent to Siberia, Katerina watches Sergei take a new lover and, in a final act of despair, drowns herself and her rival. Shostakovich's explosive opera, denounced by Stalin as 'muddle instead of music,' is a harrowing portrait of a woman driven to extremity by oppression and desire.