I am in no way an expert on Opera. I have only seen one live opera and a few lyric theatre pieces and recordings. I do very much have a growing interest in the form. I think what interested me must about this piece was possibly the strong reactions I heard from so many of my classmates. I will not say I disagreed with most of their concerns outrightly, but before I passed judgement I decided to do some reading about it. What I found really intrigued me. According to an article by the Guardian - the Opera is a satire-tragedy, Shostakovich's second Opera, and the first in what was intended to be a four part series. The series (according to Shostakovich's own notes) was meant to comment on the increased liberation of women over Russia's transition from the tsarist regimes into communism. He used blaring, sexual music (thank you trombones), and all together deplorable male characters to create a world of atrocious patriarchal authority in a state of regular abuse. The sexuality that is prominent in the story (and one of the reasons for its ban by Stalin) represents Katerina's attempt at navigating her powerless position. At the conclusion, she takes her own life after being betrayed by the one man she had come to trust and love: she is overwhelmed by her own futility, the condemnation of the merchant class for reining with terror and of the police for senseless, money-grubbing behavior also serves Shostakovich's anti-tsarist political message. While this should have gained support from Stalin and his party, many suggest that Stalin saw a personal call out in the portrayal of the police force - notably their chief. Though many in our group seemed off-put by the scenes containing rape and sexual assault, Shostakovich quoted intention was to "unmask the reality [of] the destiny of a talented, smart, and outstanding woman . . . in the nightmarish conditions of pre-revolutionary Russia." Today, this sentiment strikes as truse as it did then. In Russia, around 14,000 women per year die as a result of domestic abuse - which is still not considered a crime. As the oft-sited fate of Serebrennikov also demonstrates, the time of powerful monsters in the government has not passed in Russia (nor certainly in the United States). All that is to say, I cannot believe that the relevance of the long outlaws opera is a thing of the past. Perhaps the better questions becomes: was the production successfully used to unlock all of this relevant potential from Shostakovich's opera? And to that I will simply say: I must admit in many ways that it did not.
Comments
Post a Comment