Katerina Ismailova, opus 114.
Yuri Ahronovich, RAI Orchestra and Chorus, Gloria Lane (Katerina), William Cochran (Sergei), Kari Nurmela (Boris), Georgi Chokalov (Zinovy), Anastasia T. Schepis (Aksinya), Bernardino di Domenico (Peasant), Dimitri Lopatto (Clerk/Guard/Sentinel), Vinicio Cocchiere (Porter), Marcello Munzi (Coachman/First Workman), Osvaldo Alemanno (Second Workman/Host), Alfredo Zanazzo (Priest), Lino Puglisi (Commissar), Florindo Andreolli (Nihilist), Maurizio Mazzieri (Old Convict), Anna di Stasio (Sonyetka), Giacomo Carmi (Officer/Third Workman).
Opera D'Oro OPD-1388. AAD. 3-CD set TT 2h:53min.
Recorded live Rome, 29 May 1976.

Oh, to be madly in love; it's what most people live for - or in the case of Shostakovich's anti-heroine Katerina Ismailova, die for. The San Francisco Opera, currently producing the original Lady Macbeth, opus 29, offers this convenient synopsis (www.sfopera.com): "[Katerina] murders her husband and his father to get her hands on their wealth and enjoy it with her lover. She's found out, arrested and tried. She's sent to a gulag, cheated and maltreated. And she dies."

If you have read the few "authoritative" Western commentaries of the opera, you may be forgiven for thinking that Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is a Limpid Stream with a touch of sex and violence, or a vaudeville revue with Leskov's "horror story" grafted on, or else that it is as unremittingly grim and grey as Berg's Wozzeck (with which Shostakovich's opera is often compared).

Yet Lady Macbeth (and its 1963 revision, Katerina Ismailova) is none of these; it is a monumental work of genius. In a time when not just love, but life, was topsy-turvy, Shostakovich took love and turned it into a metaphor for a society quickly descending into decay and teetering on the edge of an epochal disaster. In the tradition of Musorgsky, the young Shostakovich observed the cataclysmic events unfolding before him and told the tale in a most colourful and original manner, in a language developed as much out of his music hall passions as his already maturing symphonic sensibilities.

There are two points in the opera where the inescapable fate of the characters, indeed, the entire Russian people, resounds with such terrifying intensity that Shostakovich's insight in composing the opera leaves no doubts of his artistic intentions: the epic Passacaglia, as a premonition, and the opening chorus of convicts in Act 4, as the revelation of the true message behind this magnificent work of art. If the vast emotional breadth and originality of this opera do not blow you away, I suspect nothing in this composer's oeuvre will.

Currently, the re-emergence of Rostropovich's definitive 1979 recording of opus 29 (EMI 7243 567776 2 or Angel 7243 567779 2 7; reviewed in DSCH No. 18) and the continued availability of its only rival by Myung Whun Chung (Deutsche Grammophon 437 511-2) make the original 1932 score the natural first choice for experiencing this masterpiece. However, since the only previous CD issue of Katerina Ismailova, opus 114, from the Kiev Opera directed by Stepan Turchak on Le Chant Du Monde (LDC 278 1021/23), has long been deleted, anyone interested in sampling this revised version of the opera had nowhere to turn before the new release we have here. Opera d'Oro present a radio broadcast of a gripping performance by the famous RAI Orchestra and Chorus of Rome, conducted with white-hot intensity by Yuri Ahronovich.

How different, then, is Katerina Ismailova from Lady Macbeth? Despite Lady Macbeth's reputation as pornophony, this is one Katerina you can safely bring home to mother, not only because the naughty bits have been excised by the composer himself, but also because no libretto is supplied with this release and, of course, everything is sung in Russian. The insert notes are paper thin, but then this is a budget issue. Listeners who, in the composer's words, have an "unhealthy interest" in the coarse naturalism of opus 29 will be somewhat disappointed with this "All-Audiences" version, but unless you understand Russian you wouldn't really appreciate the textual cleanup, with the removal of such filthy language as "boobs" and "slut". More noticeable would be the replacement of Boris's obsessive "Nyet Muzhika, nyet muzhika" (No man, no man).

You would also notice the removal of the high B-flats in Katerina's opening aria, "Tol'ko ya odna toskuyu" (I alone am depressed), which robs some of the exquisite danger of the original soprano part. A major loss is the rewriting of Katerina's put-on lament for Boris in Act 2, Scene 4, "Akh, Boris Timofeyevich." In the original, Shostakovich created a double-joke by quoting the text and melody from the opening chorus of Boris Godunov to serve his own Boris. DSCH readers will pick up on this, having read Eliezer Elper's thesis The Last Yurodivy in recent issues, and will no doubt miss its humour with the more neutral revision. David Fanning, in his fascinating study of Lady Macbeth's leitmotifs, and Laurel Fay, in her useful comparison of the two versions of the opera, From Lady Macbeth to Katerina (in Shostakovich Studies; reviewed in DSCH No. 5), both make only a passing reference to this revision.

Then there are the major revisions in the interludes. The replacement of the first Interlude with a brand new one, with its chugging rhythm reminiscent of Babi Yar, gives the work an interesting - if schizophrenic - feel, where the more serious 1960s Shostakovich sits uneasily amidst the irreverent cheek of his earlier style. The same can be said of the rewriting of the Interlude after the Police Station scene (Act 3, Scene 7), which echoes the whirlwind terror of the Tenth Symphony Scherzo. As interesting as the new interlude is, I still miss - and prefer - the madcap original with its hilarious sidesteps, halts and back-glances, which are very much in the spirit of opus 29's black humour.

By far the biggest loss for opus 114 is the complete removal of the notorious seduction music of Act 1 Scene 3, which is replaced by a brief, somewhat anachronistic "slow-fade" sequence based on material from the Police Station interlude, and along with it all the rude bits on the trombone. Call the original what you will - pornophony, muddle instead of music - the seduction scene and its infamous post-coital trombone glissandi are not only integral elements of Act 1 that spotlight the garish dichotomies facing Katerina and heighten the satiric commentary, providing essential contextual links to other scenes of brutality within the opera, but are also 123 bars of some of the best music in Lady Macbeth. Its frantic gallop, channelling a motoric violence so central in works like the Fourth Symphony, makes this a compelling piece of music that will be sorely missed. And without it, the rush of adrenalin that closes Act 1 on a high is mostly lost.

Revisions to the vocal tessitura and melodic line are subtler, but do give the opera a mellower, more melodic feel, smoothing over some of the harshness of Lady Macbeth. To this end, some of the orchestration is also toned down. While this has not been fully studied, one can hear for example in the Shabby Peasant's drunken aria and the ensuing Interlude the stripping away of some of the cacophony by removing the raucous suspended cymbals, metallic horn stabs, colourful harp glissandi and gong splashes. Most significantly, the reassigning of the high clarinet lines and brittle xylophone writing to softer instruments erases the very spicy, trademark sound of 1930s Shostakovich. Interestingly the historic 1964 recording of opus 114 by the Moscow Stanislavsky/Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Drama Theatre Orchestra and Chorus led by Gennady Provatorov (Angel/Melodiya LP RCL-4100) uses a slightly tamer version of the original orchestration.

Why then listen to opus 114 when excellent recordings of opus 29 are available? Firstly, we certainly need more than two recordings of this great work, and recordings of opus 114 have been just as illuminating, contributing to the ever-expanding depth and breadth of the music and characters. Secondly, the toning down of the tessitura makes for more comfortable listening, and is not without merit. Then there's the watering down of the content rating from R to PG, which should encourage more delicate ears to experience this marvellous opera.

This latest offering has practically no competition unless you manage to acquire the deleted 1983 Le Chant du Monde set. That spacious stereo recording, well balanced and possessing excellent clarity, serves up a powerful, incisive orchestral performance, but is let down by a Wagnerian cast who over-sing most of the way, and feel they must e-nun-ci-ate e-ver-y word for the sake of lucidity. It makes an excellent companion to those studying the score (no other recording provides such precise detail, for example in the Nose-like quarrel between Katerina and Zinovy or the capricious orchestral backdrop to Sergei's lament on Zinovy's impending return). While I give the orchestra top marks from start to finish, the passionless Gizela Zipola's big-breasted Brunnhilde of a Katerina and Alexander Zagrebelny's Wotan of a Boris can really get on your nerves with their Valhallan forcefulness. While there are rare moments of inspired singing, for example in Katerina and Sergei's bedroom scene after Boris' death, it is not enough to make this performance satisfying overall.

If one recording of opus 114 approaches Rostropovich's supremacy in opus 29, it is the 1964 LP set from Provatorov and the Stanislavsky/Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre, the team who premiered the revised opus under Shostakovich's supervision. That this has not been reissued on CD is a tragedy - Klaus Heymann, how about this for Naxos Historical? Captured with superb clarity (and in stereo, too!) the orchestra attack the score with maniacal enthusiasm for every note and serve up razor-sharp precision that puts even the London Symphony under Rostropovich to shame. This performance has revealing freshness and transparency, the lighter texture giving the work the kind of tangy fizz that must have excited audiences in the 30s. The cast complement the excellent orchestral playing with high precision singing that often reminds one of the opera's proximity to The Nose. This brings electric excitement to the Aksinya rape scene, a true ensemble tour de force that reveals the intricacy of this complex scene while whipping up maximum emotional and dramatic power. The soloists - featuring Eleonora Andreyeva as Katerina, Eduard Bulavin as Boris and Gennady Yefimov as Sergei - are engaging and sympathetic to their characters, although Lev Yeliseyev's Shabby Peasant takes the prize as the most annoying on record.

Without either Turchak's or Provatorov's set, we are left, not unfortunately at all, with this new issue, which is well worth hearing. This live performance must have been a thrill for the audience, who erupt into enthusiastic applause after each act, often even before the last note has had time to die off. Ahronovich conducts a taut and well-paced performance that has just the right measure of drama and excellent structural poetry, and he is well supported by the impressive lead cast headed by one of the great voices of the time, Gloria Lane.

Lane, who started her career as a mezzo in Gian Carlo Menotti's The Consul (1950), had only recently made the switch to dramatic soprano (in 1971) when she delivered this superb Katerina. She has raw power and passion, no doubt owing to her rich mezzo tones. She delivers a searching account of the heroine that is dappled with many shades, from the passionate to naive to downright vitriolic. Unlike the blushing Juliet of Chung's Maria Ewing or the Brunnhilde of Turchak's Zipola, Lane approaches Vishnevskaya's dynamic intensity with an added touch of vulnerability. She is particularly good in the duets, displaying great chemistry with all the lead characters, especially Boris. Just listen to their deliciously heated confrontations, for example "Ty smyeyesh!... Smyeyu!" (How dare you ... I dare!) and her sarcastic "Gribkov, znachit, na noch poyeii" (Well, you had mushrooms ... many people die after eating them) from the scene of Boris' poisoning.

Lane opens the opera with a solid delivery of the first aria, but struggles at the very high Ab-Gb midway in the line "Tol'ko mney odnoy" (But I alone have nothing to do). She struggles similarly at the apex of "The foal runs after the filly", marring an otherwise outstanding effort. Happily, perhaps having thoroughly warmed up after these two rough spots, Lane delivers an accurate and solid reading to the finish. Throughout she commands sympathy and attention, and often delights the listener with little nuances, for example in her Act 1 Scene 3 bedroom encounter with the predatory Sergei, "Shtozh ty nye zhenishsa?" (Why don't you get married?). In the large scenes she also holds her own, bringing the audience to their feet with her electrifying conclusion to Act 3 (one that in my mind outdoes even Vishnevskaya), and conjuring up a truly shattering sense of surrender in her cataclysmic crescendi in the taunting scene of Act 4.

A towering performance as well from Finnish baritone Kari Nurmela, whose Boris resonates like a fallen God, spiteful and beastly, his gleeful terrorising of Katerina so palpable he elicits contempt from the very start. In Acts 1 and 2 he nearly steals the show from Katerina. His well-crafted dramatisation is marred just twice: in Act 1, where he sings several lines starting from "Nyet unas naslyednika kapitalu" (We have no heir to leave our fortune to) an entire tone higher, having entered at the wrong pitch; and similarly in the Viennese waltz sequence, where he sustains several bars a semitone higher. You would probably not notice, for Nurmela is thoroughly compelling (what a delight it would have been to hear him sing the original texts in the "nyet muzhika" passages). In comparison, Turchak's Alexander Zagrebelny delivers the most unattractive of solos in this passage, singing the last stanzas as if he conducting a lesson in pronunciation.

Sergei receives sympathetic treatment from William Cochran, who paints him less as a bastard than (as Shostakovich is said to have suggested) a man whom women simply could not resist. There is a shade of naivety and innocent recklessness in his character; take for example the calculated melodrama of his "balcony scene" parting from Katerina, which is affecting for its somewhat transparent pretence. Here Sergei conjures the world of La Boheme even as the opera veers on the brink of Wozzeck, and we actually feel sorry for him. We warm up to his Sergei, so that we forgive him even as he leaves Katerina out in the cold for Sonyetka. There is less of the snide and devilish manipulator than we find in Rostropovich's Nicolai Gedda or Provatorov's Gennady Yelimov.

Zinovy also gets a fair deal with Georgi Chokalov's well-rounded performance, although the tradition of the weedy, wimpy, non-performing husband sticks like glue. But what a struggle he puts up in his confrontation with Katerina just before his fatal encounter with the candlestick (Act 2 Scene 5)! Here he shines above most Zinovys recorded thus far: listen for instance to his indignant accusation "Skazhi mnye pravdu" (I demand the truth).

The supporting cast, presumably Italian, is generally competent. Although the chorus make an especially strong impression for their shabby ensemble singing, in context of their characters as either lazy drunken workers or lazy drunken policemen, this can be appropriately funny. The Police Station scene - led with gusto by Puglisi's swaggering Sergeant, an altogether more entertaining lout than Turchak's very unfunny bunch of law enforcers - is truly comical in this respect. Both the men and women make a mess of the calculated rhythmic chaos (especially the rhythmic laughter) of the Aksinya rape scene and the taunting of Katerina in Act 4 respectively, and the men are particularly lazy in the worker's song of Act 2 Scene 4. To their credit the ensemble deliver an intense first chorus "Zachem, ze tu uyezzayes" (Why are you leaving us, master?), while the Act 4 choruses ache with a resonance of impending doom. Here the Stanislavsky chorus is comparatively thinner, but this makes for marvellous clarity in the complex mob sequences.

Anastasia Schepis' Aksinya throws in some especially memorable squeals as she gets her udders pawed (or in this sanitised version, has her dignity compromised, wink wink), while Ana di Stasio as Sonyetka plays the weary victim who gets what she wants (although she does not sound nearly as beguiling as Provatorov's Nina Isakova). Together, Stasio and Lane deliver one of the opera's more hair-raising screams as they plunge into the icy river, a moment that tends to sound comical on audio recordings (especially with Rostropovich and Turchak - the former sounds utterly put on, while the latter evokes a drowning cat). Here in these closing pages the chorus paint a severe atmosphere of almost purgatorial bleakness around the suicide-murder, finishing off perfectly with the newly extended solo for the Old Convict to the accompanying trudge of col legno strings.

The shabbiest performance comes from the Shabby Peasant himself, who despite a promising start gets most of his entries wrong in his disastrous Act 2 Scene 6 solo. He comes in an entire beat late in "Budu pitya tsey vyek" (singing's fine when there's something to drink) and, rushing to catch up, never truly recovers as he chases the orchestra before finishing an entire half bar behind at the start of the galloping Interlude.

The orchestra are also guilty of some occasionally messy ensemble playing, critically in the exposed Act 1 Interlude between Scenes 2 and 3, and often in the very complex sequences such as the mercurial orchestral backdrop to Sergei's aria about the return of Zinovy, or the final confrontation between Katerina and Zinovy. A particularly weak point is the wedding fugue (Act 3 Scene 8), which is uncharacteristically lazy. At this point of the opera, a tempo nearly half that of opus 29 is observed in all three recordings of opus 114, but the sluggish RAI Orchestra paint the wedding's introduction as more of a garden-party than a grotesque last-supper, as served by Rostropovich and Chung's opus 29.

Yet although even in these moments of imprecision the orchestra deliver a powerful and enthusiastic offering, individual musicians playing with audible commitment. From piccolo to tuba, each moulds its lines with loving care (hear the latter in an impressive pedal towards the end of the Aksinya rape scene).

Ahronovich shapes the opera with a keen ear for Shostakovich's timbres, bringing out the rich festering lower registers (especially in the bass clarinet and contrabassoon) that underpin the entire score, and unearthing little gems in the score such as the Musorgskian accompaniment to Katerina's Act 4 "Stepanych, let me through" and the knocking motif (quoted in the fourth movement of the Eighth Quartet) that accompanies the dying Boris as he points his accusing finger at Katerina.

But before you pop the champagne, a small caveat: although this recording dates from 1976, it is, unfortunately, in mono. The disc nevertheless sounds remarkably well on two speakers - just sample the frightening bass drum thwacks and the dramatic sheen of the chorus in the final scene ("On your feet!"), the pungency of the woodwind chords in Act 1, or the chamber-like clarity of the first Interlude. The sound is clean and spacious, and there is enough perspective to allow various instrumental details to shine through. The dynamic and tonal range is also impressive.

We will probably not be seeing any brand new recordings of opus 114, now that the original opus 29 score is readily available on CD. Despite Laurel Fay's pleading, there is no unambiguous evidence that Shostakovich preferred the revision to the original - Glikman's claims and several public comments from the composer to this effect were made at a time when the revival, and indeed survival, of his opera was at stake. Any new recording of opus 114 will have to confront the fine versions of opus 29 head-on, a task that I believe could be fulfilled definitively by a CD reissue of the 1964 Stanislavsky recording. Until then, this budget issue will do more than just fill the gap; it will be a recording you will enjoy listening to time and again, despite its flaws. And after each act you are as likely to erupt into applause as spontaneously as the Roman concertgoers did in 1976. Opera d'Oro's Katerina is a bargain not to be missed.

CH Loh
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