Shostakovich, "Lady Macbeth..." opera - Interlude

"Pornophonic" music

Despite the conflicting opinions that his figure arouses, Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, called Stalin, was a rather ingenious guy. He was the inventor of the brilliant neologism "pornophony". He used it for the first time to refer to an opera by the comrade composer Dmitri Shostakovich, after attending its performance at the Bolshoi Theater, a venue he left that night visibly upset.

The work in question was Lady Macbeth of the Mtsenck District, an opera in four acts that Dmitri had premiered to great success almost simultaneously in Leningrad and Moscow in January 1934. Set in pre-revolutionary times, it tells the story of a woman who has an affair with a servant of her husband, which leads her to commit a crime.

Pravda's review
The play was a resounding success and ran for two years, until Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili came to attend the premiere at the Bolshoi on the night of December 26, 1935. The following day Pravda published an editorial entitled "Muddle instead of music "; the epithets ranged from "animally realistic" to "howling concert." The text closed with these words:

"... it is not enough to smudge pages. This author has to know that music for the theater must evoke the great traditional opera, and that symphonic music must be clear and explicit, simple and direct."

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975)

In just a couple of days, the work went from masterpiece to reprehensible concoction. Stormy debates took place within the Union of Soviet Composers, in the presence of Dmitri, who stood, distraught, in a corner of the room. The work was withdrawn from billboard in early 1936.

Something similar to rehabilitation appeared the following year after Dmitri premiered his Fifth Symphony. That same year he was appointed professor of composition at the Leningrad Conservatory. Creative work had to wait a bit, it was necessary to pause.

Lady Macbeth  - Interlude
The entire opera lasts two and a half hours. We present here an Interlude, written to accompany the stage changes. It is more accessible than the rest of the work and does not include any pornophonic section. It lasts barely two minutes; the rest is applause.