La Scala gala crowd cheers premiere of Shostakovich’s ‘Lady Macbeth’ once censored by Stalin

The gala crowd at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala erupted in a 12-minute standing ovation Sunday following the season premiere of Dmitry Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” marking the second time since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine that the prestigious opera house opened its season with a Russian work.

The audience enthusiastically embraced stage director Vasily Barkhatov’s bold interpretation of the melodrama, which follows merchant wife Katerina Izmajilova’s descent into a murderous love triangle against the backdrop of Stalin’s Soviet Union. The production culminated in a jarring final scene featuring a Soviet truck crashing into a wedding party with two characters perishing in flames.

American soprano Sara Jakubiak, making her La Scala debut in the demanding title role, received a shower of carnations and thunderous applause for her tireless performance throughout the 2-hour-and-40-minute opera. “No one ever expects this,” Jakubiak said backstage of the enthusiastic reception. “I am just so happy.”

The audience also showed their appreciation for conductor Riccardo Chailly, who was making his final December 7 gala premiere appearance as music director at the storied institution.

While the 2022 premiere of the Russian opera “Boris Godunov” had sparked protests from the Ukrainian community, this year’s presentation inspired a different response. A dozen activists from a liberal Italian party held a quiet demonstration with Ukrainian and European flags, aiming “to draw attention to the defense of liberty and European democracy, threatened today by President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and to support the Ukrainian people.”

Separately, a larger demonstration of several dozen people gathered in front of Milan’s city hall calling for Palestinian freedom and an end to colonialism, though police kept protesters far from arriving dignitaries. Such demonstrations have long provided a counterpoint to the glamour of La Scala’s season premieres, which traditionally draw cultural, business and political elites dressed in formal attire.

Italy’s Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli attended the premiere, joined in the royal box by Holocaust survivor and senator for life Liliana Segre and Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala. Italian pop stars Mahmoud and Achille Lauro were also among the night’s attendees.

Chailly began developing this production with Barkhatov approximately two years ago, following the success of “Boris Godunov.” He described staging Shostakovich’s opera, which has appeared at La Scala only four times previously, as “a must.”

“It is an opera that has long suffered, and needs to make up for lost time,” Chailly explained at a news conference last month, referring to the work’s complicated history. The opera was infamously blacklisted in 1936, just days after Stalin himself attended a performance, on the eve of his Great Purge campaign of political repression.

La Scala’s new general manager, Fortunato Ortombina, defended the decision to stage these Russian works at a theater historically associated with Italian repertoire. “Music is fundamentally superior to any ideological conflict,” Ortombina stated. “Shostakovich, and Russian music more broadly, have an authority over the Russian people that exceeds Putin’s own.”

For Jakubiak, 47, the role of Katerina presented significant challenges. “That I’m a murderess, that I’m singing 47 high B flats in one night, you know, all these things,” she explained while preparing for an earlier preview performance. “You go, ‘Oh my gosh, how will I do this?’ But you manage, with the right kind of work, the right team of people.”

The American soprano, best known for her interpretations of Strauss and Wagner, found common ground with the meticulous Chailly. “Whenever I prepare a role, it’s always the text and the music and the text and the rhythms,” she said. “First, I do this process with, you know, a cup of coffee at my piano and then we add the other layers and then the notes. So I guess we’re actually somewhat similar in that regard.”

Jakubiak’s career continues to ascend, with a major debut scheduled for July when she will sing her first Isolde in concert with Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Barkhatov’s staging sets the opera in a cosmopolitan Russian city during the 1950s—the final years of Stalin’s regime—rather than the 19th-century rural village of the original 1930s production. Most of the action unfolds inside a dark restaurant with Art Deco details, featuring a rotating balustrade that transforms into various spaces: a kitchen, a basement, and an office where interrogations take place, all rendered in grim, dingy tones.

Despite the opera’s tragic arc, the 42-year-old director, who has built a flourishing international career, described the story as “a weird breakthrough to happiness and freedom.” He added, with a touch of somber reflection, “Sadly, the statistics show that a lot of people die on their way to happiness and freedom.”