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Back to the future: Shostakovich's revision of Leskov's ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Caryl Emerson
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Extract

‘Librettology’ has begun to acquire a working vocabulary. Critics now investigate the relationship between a libretto and its literary source in terms other than fidelity; a text adapted for musical setting no longer disappears from the realm of the ‘literary’. Historians and musicologists are considering the role of opera librettos in cultural history, with special attention to librettos that rework historical, national or mythic themes. How operatic texts transpose and thus ‘re-accent’ a nation's literary classics is emerging as a fruitful and still unexplored field.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 59 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 See especially Weisstein, Ulrich, ‘The Libretto as Literature’, Books Abroad: An International Literary Quarterly (Winter, 1961), 16–22Google Scholar, and ‘Librettology: The Fine Art of Coping with a Chinese Twin’, Komparatistzsche Hefte, 5/6 (Universität Bayreuth, 1986), 23–42.Google Scholar

2 An exemplary discussion of these interrelationships in the Russian context can be found in Taruskin, Richard, ‘“The Present in the Past”: Russian Opera and Russian Historiography, c. 1870’, in Brown, Malcolm Hamrick, ed., Russian and Soviet Music: Essays for Boris Schwarz (Ann Arbor, 1984), 77–147.Google Scholar

3 See Schmidgall, Gary, Literature as Opera (New York, 1977), 10–12.Google Scholar

4 This position is taken by Conrad, Peter in his Romantic Opera and Literary Form (Berkeley, 1978).Google Scholar

5 Leskov in conversation with V. V. Krestovsky and Krestovsky's stenographer I. K. Markuze, according to the latter's memoirs (published in Istoricheskii vestnik, 3 [1900]). Leskov's comments are reprinted in ‘Literaturnyi arkhiv’, Zvezda, 2 (1931), 224.

6 Apropos of this tale, Leskov's son and biographer Andrei writes: ‘There is no question that the plot of the story was not invented. In general and wherever possible, Leskov preferred to construct his stories on the basis of authentic facts. He could easily have heard something close to his “Macbeth” events during one of his countless journeys in the Volga region […] He could also have heard it from his father, the president of the Orlov Criminal Court, or he could have learned something similar from the cases in the Orlov Criminal Court where he held his first job.’ Leskov, A. N., ‘Kak N. S. Leskov pisal “Ledi Makbet”’, in ‘Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uezda’: Opera D. D. Shostakovicha (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennyi Akademicheskii Malyi Opernyi Teatr, 1934), 19Google Scholar. This booklet, with eight essays and a libretto, was published by the Maly Theatre for its 1934 premiere. Henceforth referred to in Notes as LM.

7 ‘Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uezda’, in Leskov, N. S., Sobranie sochinenii, I (Moscow, 1956), 143Google Scholar. In English see the translation by Magarshack, David in Nikolai Leskov, Selected Tales (New York, 1961).Google Scholar

8 Galina Vishnevskaya discusses the character of Boris Timofeevich, as well as his subsequent desexualization in the 1963 version of the opera, in her autobiography Galina: A Russian Story (New York, 1984), 352–5.Google Scholar

9 Boris Timofeevich's prurient insistence that his daughter-in-law take an oath of fidelity to her husband before he departs (Act I scene 1: ‘Molodye zheny nynche uzh slishkom tovo […] randevu, sous provansal […]’ [Young wives nowadays are too […] well, you know […] rendez-vous, sauce provençale]) includes a quotation from Chekhov's humorous story ‘In the Post Office’ (1883). Chekhov, A. P., ‘V pochtovom otdelenii’, Sobranie sochinenii, II (Moscow, 1960), 88–9.Google Scholar

10 The ‘older generation’ in Ostrovsky's play is a mother-in-law (rather than a father-in-law), but erotic rivalry of the sort that we see in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth is very clearly present. Act I scene I of the opera, in which a weak-willed son leaves home and a suspicious, strong-willed parent requires prostrations and vows of fidelity from the wife, has a direct parallel in Act II of The Storm (and no equivalent in Leskov).

11 Shostakovich, D., ‘Moe ponimanie “Ledi Makbet”’, LM, 6.Google Scholar

12 on the rediscovery of Leskov's ‘Lady Macbeth’ around 1930, see Anninskii, L., Leskovskoe Ozherel'ye, 2nd expanded edn (Moscow, 1986), Chap. 2, 70–3, and Leskov (see n. 6), 19.Google Scholar

13 [Gisin, S. N.], ‘Pered prem'ery “Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uezda”’, LM, 5.Google Scholar

14 For a detailed discussion of this fateful resolution, see Schwarz, Boris, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917–1981, enlarged edn (Bloomington, 1983), 109–40.Google Scholar

15 Adr. Piotrovskii, ‘Ot povesti Leskova k opere Shostakovicha i k spektakliu Malogo opernogo teatra‘, LM, 11–16Google Scholar. Subsequent page numbers given in parentheses in text.

16 Ostretsov, A., ‘Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uezda’, Sovetskaia muzyka, 6 (1933), 17–18.Google Scholar

17 See, for example, Ordzhonikidze, Givi, ‘Vesna tvorcheskoi zrelosti’, Sovetskaia muzyka, 9 (1966), 46;Google ScholarShumskaia, N., ‘Traditsii i novatorstvo v opere Shostakovicha Katerina Izmailova’, Muzyka i sovremennost', vyp. 3 (Moscow, 1965), 114.Google Scholar

18 Bogdanova, A., Opery i balety Shostakovicha (Moscow, 1979), 146–7Google Scholar. In her book-length analysis of the opera, Bogdanova traces the interaction between Katerina's narrated fate and the others' musical themes. Through most of the opera, Bogdanova suggests, Katerina is redeemed to the extent that she avoids contact with her environment; her musical line does not reflect others' motifs. But at the end, Katerina purifies herself by having her fate (death by drowning) associated with the opening musical theme of Act IV, a theme depicting the suffering of convicts and, by extension, of all Russia. Bogdanova, A., ‘Katerina Izrnailova’ D. D. Shostakovicha (putevoditel') (Moscow, 1968), 84–5.Google Scholar

19 Ordzhonikidze (see n. 17), 40.

20 As Leskov himself explained to A. I. Faresov, he took great care as a writer to reflect the social class and characteristics of his heroes in their speech patterns, but ‘from my own person I speak through the language of the ancient folktales and through church-folk language, in purely literary speech’. Faresov, A. I., Protiv techeniia (St Petersburg, 1904), 274.Google Scholar This passage is explicated by Boris Eikhenbaum in his 1927 essay on Leskov, , ‘Leskov and Contemporary Prose’, trans. Rice, Martin P., in Russian Literature Triquarterly, 11 (Winter, 1975), 215.Google Scholar

21 Lantz, K. A., Nikolay Leskov, Twayne's World Author Series (Boston, 1979), 44–5.Google Scholar

22 Nikolai Leskov, Nekuda [No Way Out], in Leskov, N. S., Sobranie sochinenii, II (Moscow, 1956), 180Google Scholar. Lantz cites this passage on p. 44; my translation differs somewhat. In the novel this discussion continues for several pages, with the doctor defending the right of the Russian people to their own sort of drama and Zarnitsyn insisting that ‘the educated people of all nations share a common sense of what is dramatic in life’ (p. 182).

23 In a sense, the text of Leskov's ‘Lady Macbeth’ is all stage direction. In the words of one literary critic, ‘this story, as opposed to Leskov's best works, contains no religious ideas which – among all the moral lapses and evildoings – renew and revive the souls of the characters portrayed. It is as if the souls of his heroes do not participate in the course of dramatic action, which is described [solely] by external features. The image of the Russian Lady Macbeth, from the moment that she is drawn into her first crime, seems motionless and [thus] produces a melodramatic impression.’ Volynskii, A. L. (ps. Akim Lvovich Flekser), N. S. Leskov (Peterburg, 1923), 117 (repr. of N. S. Leskov: Kriticheskii ocherk [St Petersburg, 1898]).Google Scholar

24 ‘[Leskov] finds no grounds at all on which to justify her [Katerina], not only morally but even psychologically’, Shostakovich wrote in 1933. ‘I am treating Ekaterina Izmailova as a complex, whole, tragic nature. This is a loving woman, a woman who feels deeply, in no way sentimental.’ Shostakovich, D. D., ‘“Ekaterina Izmailova”: Avtor ob opere’, Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 14 December 1933Google Scholar, as cited in Shostakovich, D., O vremeni i o sebe: 1926–1975 (Moscow, 1980), 35–6.Google Scholar

25 Shostakovich, D., ‘Plakat' i smeiat'sia’, Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 3 March 1933 (see n. 24), 34.Google Scholar

26 This move in Shostakovich from musical ‘realism’ to a more conventional napevnost' or ‘song-like quality’ closely resembles the creative evolution of his great predecessor (and personal hero) Modest Musorgsky a half-century earlier, after his radical experiment in setting Gogol's prose to music. Shostakovich's several affectionately parodic quotations from Musorgsky's Boris in his Lady Macbeth suggest that he might have had this parallel evolution in mind.

Two clear textual references to Boris are: (1) the workers' chorus in Act I scene 1, singing a pseudo-lament over the departure of Zinovy Borisovich to the words, ‘Na kogo ty nas pokidaesh’ (an equally ironicised song to the same text is sung by the crowds around Novodevichii Monastery in the Prologue of Boris Godunov), and (2) Sergei's aside in Act II scene 5, when Katerina wakens him in bed to whisper of her husband's return: ‘Vot tebe, babushka, i Yuriev den'!’ (the folk expression Grigory uses in the Inn Scene after the Hostess informs him that ‘someone has escaped from Moscow’ and the police are erecting barriers at the border).

27 See Norris, Geoffrey, ‘The Operas’, in Shostakovich: The Man and his Music (Salem, NH, 1982), 117–19.Google Scholar

28 Shostakovich, D., ‘Moe ponimanie “Ledi Makbet”’, LM, 7.Google Scholar

29 Asaflev, B. V., ‘O tvorchestve Shostakovicha i ego opere “Ledi Makbet”’, LM, 28–9.Google Scholar The essay is reprinted in the anthology: Asaflev, B., Ob opere: Izbrannye stat'i, 2nd edn (Leningrad, 1985), 310–19Google Scholar, esp. 314. Subsequent references are to the latter, more available source.

30 I draw here on Mikhail Bakhtin's typology for ‘double-voiced words’ as laid out in Chap. 5 of his Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics [1929, revised 1963], ed. and trans. Emerson, Caryl (Minneapolis, 1984), 185–200Google Scholar. Although Bakhtin applied the terms ‘polyphonic’ and ‘contrapuntal’ to Dostoevsky's novels, there is no indication that he had any strict musical analogy in mind.

31 Ordzhonikidze (see n. 17), 45.

32 Shostakovich (see n. 28), 7.

33 Volkov, Solomon, ‘O Sergee Sergeeviche i Dmitrii Dmitrieviche’, Chast' rechi 1981/2, no. 2/3 (1982), 254–62.Google Scholar An English translation appeared as ‘A Conversation with Mstislav Rostropovich’ in Keynote, 11 (March 1987), 8–12Google Scholar; that translation amended in the text for accuracy and tone. I thank Laurel Fay for alerting me to these articles.

34 Interview with Shostakovich: ‘Tragediia-satira’, in Sovetskoe zskusstvo, 16 October 1932 (see n. 24), 31.Google Scholar

35 Ordzhonikidze (see n. 17), 40.

36 For more discussion of epic-social and other mixed genres, see Khentova, , Shostakovich: Zhizn' i tvorchestvo (Leningrad, 1985), I, 290–6Google Scholar; Bogdanova (see n. 18), 195–202.

37 Sollertinsky, I. I., ‘“Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo Uezda”’ [1934], in I. Sollertinskii: Kriticheskie stat'i (Leningrad, 1963), 73.Google Scholar

38 ‘Novaia opera Shostakovicha “Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uezda”’, in Vecherniata Moskva, 21 December 1932.Google Scholar Cited in the Prefatory Note ‘Ot redaktora’ in Shostakovich, D., ‘Katerina Izmailova’ Sobranie sochinenii, XXII (Moscow, 1985), [ii].Google Scholar

39 If we credit his alleged memoirs, in The Nose Shostakovich had attempted to preserve intact within a grotesque environment a lyrical ‘honesty’ and pity for Kovalyov's predicament, to be reflected in the hero's pathetic aria in scene 6. ‘Really, when you think about it, what's so funny about a man losing his nose?‘ the composer remarked, ‘Why laugh at the poor monster?’ Shostakovich, Dmitri, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, as related to and edited by Volkov, Solomon (New York, 1979), 208.Google Scholar

These authorial instructions notwithstanding, Kovalyov's inner dilemma is almost impossible to transmit in the surreal context of the surrounding scenes. If we add to this the hero's utter failure to change, and his restoration at the end as whole (and wholly trivial), then we can collapse his tragedy into a simpler and more uniform grotesque.

40 For surveys, see Montagu-Nathan, M., ‘Gogol and Music’, The Monthly Musical Record (May 1952), 92–8Google Scholar; Keefer, Lubov, ‘Gogol and Music’, Slavic and East European Journal, 14 (1970), 160–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Asafiev (see n. 29), 316.

42 For more on the Leskov–Ostrovsky connection (with interesting information on the contemporary lubok [popular woodcut] series ‘About the Merchant's Wife and the Clerk’), see Guminskii, V., ‘Organicheskoe vzaimodeistvie (Ot “Ledi Makbet”… k Soborianam)’, in V mire Leskova: Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1983), 238–47.Google Scholar

43 For the Czech libretto of Katya Kabanova and an adequate, although very free, English translation, see Janáčk, Jenůfa/Katya Kabanova, Opera Guide 33 (English National Opera/The Royal Opera; London, 1985), 87–119. Katya's final aria occurs in Act III (p. 116).Google Scholar

44 Boris Asafiev and Abram Gozenpud have advanced similar theses. For a critique and expansion of their work, see the discussion in Anshakov, B. Ya., ‘O nekotorykh chertakh khudozhestvennogo mira P. I. Chaikovskogo i osobennostiakh pereomysleniia pushkinskikh obrazakh v opere Pikovaia dama’, in P. I. Chaikovskii i russkaia literatura (Izhevsk, 1980), 125–8.Google Scholar

45 Volkov, Solomon, ‘O neizbezhnoi vstreche: Shostakovich i Dostoevskii’, Rossiia/Russia, 4 (1980), 199–221. Subsequent page references in text.Google Scholar

46 See, for example, Khentova (see n. 36), 288; Ordzhonikidze (see n. 17), 40 (where the Dostoevsky connection in Lady Macbeth is found, unconvincingly, in the question both are presumed to pose: can one build happiness by criminal means?); a link is also suggested by Asafiev (see n. 29), 313, in his discussion of Katerina Izmailova's fate as ‘the intensive growth of a woman-personality through involuntary crime’.

47 The story appeared in Epokha under the title ‘Ledi Makbet nashego uezda’ [Lady Macbeth of our District], and was signed by Leskov's pen name of the 1860s, M. Stebnitsky.

Several decades later, in a letter to the prison specialist Linev, D. A. (Dalin), Leskov remarked: ‘I wrote the whole thing “from my head”, without having observed any of it in real life, but the late Dostoevsky found that I had reproduced reality quite truthfully.’ Leskov's letter of 5 March 1888, cited and discussed in Andrei Leskov, Zhizn' Nikolaiia Leskova, I (Moscow, 1984), 131.Google Scholar

48 The most famous fictional expressions of this conviction are Crime and Punishment and the second half of The Brothers Karamazov; for the same argument in essay form, see ‘The Milieu’, Grazhdanin, 1873, no.2, in Dostoevsky, F. M., The Diary of a Writer, trans. Brasol, Boris (Santa Barbara, 1979), 9–22.Google Scholar

49 ‘Tragediia-satira’, interview (see n. 24); for the expansion into a tetralogy, see Shostakovich, D., ‘God posle “Ledi Makbeta”’, in Vercherniaia krasnaia gazeta, 14 January 1935.Google Scholar

50 Tynyanov, Yury, ‘Dostoevsky and Gogol: Towards a Theory of Parody’, in Meyer, Priscilla and Rudy, Stephen, eds., Dostoevsky and Gogol: Texts and Criticism (Ann Arbor, 1979), 104.Google Scholar