Finale of Act IV (Katerina Izmaylova)

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District ran for two years after its 1934 premiere until Pravda attacked it in January 1936 under the heading Muddle Instead of Music; the opera disappeared, and Shostakovich withdrew the Fourth Symphony he was finishing. He revised the score in the late 1950s, softening the vocal lines and the most explicit orchestral writing, and the new version was staged in Moscow in January 1963 as Katerina Izmaylova. Leskov's story follows a merchant's wife who kills three people for a lover who then betrays her, and ends on the convict road to Siberia.