Uneasy nights at the Boston Symphony

Following a NY Times review that undermined the music director, Slippedisc’s Susan Hall went to see how the orchestra fared at Carnegie Hall in Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

by Susan Hall

The Boston Symphony led by its music director perhaps-in-perpetuity, Andris Nelsons, performed Dmitri Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at Carnegie Hall. While family members of the BSO musicians speak about instrumentalists’ problems with the conductor, these were not evident in Lady Macbeth.

The orchestra was spot on. Entrances were brisk and crisp. Exits abrupt when they should be. We heard a clear, exciting rendition of a complex and difficult score with all its sex and humor in position. The erotic yearnings of the heroine, sung by Kristine Opolais, were lyrical, and included the seductive removal of knee-high stockings. The satiric clowning of Alexander Kravets as the Shabby Peasant amused. The intensity of the opera was sustained for three hours and captured in spades under Nelsons. The ironic additions of the cancan, gallop, foxtrot, and an imbalanced waltz disarm the listener and intrigue.

What turns Andris Nelsons on? Without a doubt, Dmitri Shostakovich. He has won Grammys for his recordings with the BSO of the Shostakovich Symphonies no. 4, 5, 8., 9 , 11 and the Passaglia from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, performed at Carnegie in its original form. Shostakovich is ear-catching. Since Leonard Bernstein first won a Grammy performing the composer, Shostakovich appears regularly on the list of nominees and winners of the Grammys. Nelson’s mentor, Mariss Jansons, with whom Nelsons had a relationship clouded in mystery, won a Grammy for Shostakovch in 2006. Nelsons may have learned to express the dynamic extremes of Russian musical fare from Jansons.

Shostakovich dedicated Lady Macbeth to his first wife. The performance at Carnegie felt like a dedication to Nelson’s first wife, Kristine Opolais. She gave a perfect performance, ranging from unfulfilled desire to a shriek of horror and pain. This evening erased memories of the pairs’ last scheduled performance at the Metropolitan Opera when Opolais left Tosca and Nelsons followed her.

Now at the welcoming Carnegie Hall they triumph in a blazing performance of music by a composer, who like these two Latvian artists, suffered under tyrannical Soviet regimes.

Shostakovich is heralded as the symphonist of the second half of the twentieth century. At Carnegie, the stage is packed full of musicians, the orchestra and the Tanglewood Chorus filling every inch. The Orchestra is shaped like a softly arcing new moon, sending the sound out through the Hall, as acoustically resonant as the BSO’s home.

Shostakovich was literary. He called this work a tragic satire. Laugh-out-loud funny at times, one senses how important humor is for the success of a work,whether it’s bleak or richly conic.

The orchestra speaks. Sometimes you look up to try to see what instrument is speaking–brass, string or human. Words sung are never in conflict, because the orchestra too has a voice. Its voice is not a caption, but rather composed to undermine the tyranny of words and offer a “continuous symphonic current.” (The composer’s words). Peculiar brass sounds arrest us. For instance, two brassy barks warn about the bullying father-in-law, sung by Günther Groissböck.

Striking contrasts are developed between the lyricism of Katerina, a murderess who Shostakovich makes sympathetic by portraying the men in her life as barbarians. They in turn are characterized by decadent, western-oriented music and starkly set off the very human Katerina. Only the prisoners in the final Act are as lyrical, for they are symbols of oppressed people.

The novel on which the opera is based was a “tight-lipped shocker.” Lips here are as loose as can be imagined. Shostakovich dares to be irreverent, politically incorrect and dissonant. He is also scatalogical. The BSO brass section played his farts and pelvic thrusts with verve and humor. High, middle and low brow singing encompasses all the emotional registers. The thick musical world evokes both our awe and sadness.

As Nelsons and the BSO perform, we sense the urgent need to look at what’s going on around us. You cannot avert your gaze from the ugly. Shostakovich and his interpreters don’t. This message is also sent by Carnegie Hall as programming examines the music of the Weimar Republic. The Nazis banned Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk before Stalin did. This performance illustrates life lived under tyrannous regimes and suggests why we should continue to listen to them and glare.

Photo: Winslow Townson/BSO

Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024, in Boston. (Photo by Winslow Townson)
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Kristine Opolais, soprano (Katerina Izmailova)
Brenden Gunnell, tenor (Sergei)
Peter Hoare, tenor (Zinovy Izmailov)
Günther Groissböck, bass (Boris Izmailov and Ghost of Boris)
Michelle Trainor, soprano (Aksinya)
Alexandra LoBianco, soprano (Female Convict)
Maria Barakova, mezzo-soprano (Sonyetka)^
Matthew DiBattista, tenor (Teacher)
Neal Ferreira, tenor (Foreman)
Charles Blandy, tenor (Foreman & Drunken Guest)
Yeghishe Manucharyan, tenor (Foreman & Coachman)
Alexander Kravets, tenor (Shabby Peasant)
David Kravitz, baritone (Millhand)
Brandon Cedel, bass-baritone (Porter & Policeman)
Joo Won Kang, baritone (Steward)
Patrick Guetti, bass (Officer and Sentry)
Goran Juric, bass (Priest)
Anatoli Sivko, bass (Chief of Police)
Dmitri Belosselskiy, bass (Old Convict)^
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
 James Burton, conductor
Benjamin Richter, staging coordinator