#mtsensk

I went to see Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District tonight at the Metropolitan Opera. I’ve only ever listened to this opera by Shostakovich; I’ve never seen a production nor read the libretto. This, then, was an eye-opener.

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is an opera about boredom. Boredom, and the sleepless lust it breeds. Boredom, and the sleepless bloodlust it breeds. Boredom, and the sleepless boredom doomed to follow.

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is an opera that is at its most melodic and most beautiful during the ugliest moments: the joyful murder and adulterous ecstasy.

This particular production does not rely heavily on nuance or subtlety. Rather, Graham Vick’s re-envisioning of the opera was the Louisville slugger of symbolic productions. Nay! Too gentle! This production was a Louisville slugger with nails duct-taped to it—an improvised blunt object desperately reached for during a home invasion or street brawl.

Take for instance the gigantic red rose that ascends during the first adulterous tryst. I’m no Dan Brown, but I think this represents sex. (I surmised this also because they were banging behind the refrigerator.) I appreciate the restraint and maturity Mr. Vick displayed in his representation of the act of carnal knowledge; it would be so easy to devolve into pure smut, after all.

Not that Lady Macbeth is the most understated of operas. Nevertheless, a great deal hinges upon implication. This was lost in the ham-handed explicitness of the production. The irony of so many modern productions lies in the claim of minimalism: doing more with less. A minimalist production is Astrid Varnay, a tree, and a sword. By contrast, there was so much action on stage at all times during Lady Macbeth that it made Star Wars: The Phantom Menace look as though it had been directed by Clint Eastwood on Quaaludes.

Act III was a notable exception in this regard. Not because Mr. Vick had a flash of inspiration, but because the context works with his style. Rightly reading the police scene as a perverse tribute to Gilbert and Sullivan, the director drowned the stage in buffoonery and Soviet propaganda; most notable was a giant Roy Lichtenstein fist with a Batman “KABLAM” in Cyrillic.

In many ways, the allusion in the title is misleading. For there is no introspection that leads to a collapse; rather, the nightmare is dismissed as mere fantasy, and Katya falls back asleep. The sad reality seems to be—at least in this production—that the Thane of Cawdor has declared himself Soviet Premiere. Banquo’s ghost is the USSR.

There is something profoundly arrogant and patronizing about the production’s reliance on brute force to get a point across—a self-indulgence perhaps due to a few bottles of wine too many. Fortunately, it was not able to drown out the marvelous singing of Eva-Maria Westbroek as Katya and Anatoli Kotscherga as her father-in-law Boris. Both portrayed complex characters existing in and despite of their own manifold contradictions.

But enough about the arrogance and patronization of the staging and direction. For far worse than any shitty production is– well, let me take a moment to set the stage. Our players: Martha, the aged wife, and Fred, the aged husband.

“Fred,” she whispers as the lead soprano stumbles a bit on her dress, “did you see that?”

“What?” he asks a little more loudly than he intended, leaning toward her with his good ear.

“Never mind!” she replies, concerned about the heads turning toward them.

“Goddamit, Martha,” he insists, frustrated with his own oncoming deafness, “what did you say? Tell me!”

He is met with only silence from Martha and angry hisses from his neighbors.

The nadir of the theatrical experience, the deep beyond any deep Lucifer has voice to express, is the self-appointed Silence Enforcer, whose self-righteous and self-absorbed admonitions make far more noise than that which he seeks to stomp out. Hardly a second after a rustle, cough, sneeze, ill-timed whisper, or—gods forfend!—cellphone comes the cacophony: “Shhh!” “Do you mind?” “Would you stop, please?” This frustrated urgency reveals a man who sees himself as the catcher in the rye: if he should let even one pass, the rest will surely follow. The Silence Enforcer plays brinksmanship with a society of philistines—and refuses to blink or back down.

The Silence Enforcer is a walking paradox and a focal point for the rage that wells within my body. The Silence Enforcer grinds my gears; around him, my jimmies are in a state of perpetual rustledom.