Šostakovič's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk opens La Scala season in Soviet Art Deco setting

The Teatro alla Scala in Milan opens its 2025/2026 opera season on September 7 with Dmitri Šostakovič's 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk', directed by Vasily Barkhatov and conducted by Riccardo Chailly. The production marks the 50th anniversary of the composer's death and returns to La Scala after its 1990s debut there. Barkhatov sets the opera in a luxury restaurant styled as Soviet Art Deco (also called post-constructivism), a short-lived style from 1932 to 1937 inspired by American Art Deco and introduced to the USSR by architect Albert Kahn. The original 1934 opera, which premiered in Leningrad and Moscow, was banned after Stalin attended two years later due to its social criticism and explicit sexuality; it was restored in the 1960s in a censored version and later recovered. The story, adapted from Nikolai Leskov, follows Katerina Izmailova who murders her father-in-law and husband for love, then drowns with her lover's new flame. Barkhatov avoids explicit sex scenes, using Katerina as a narrator to preserve the music's primacy. The premiere will also be broadcast on Rai and Rai Play.