Katerina Izmaylova

This is Shostakovich's revision of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the opera after Leskov that Pravda denounced in January 1936 under the heading Muddle Instead of Music, ending its career overnight. Working between 1956 and 1963, he softened the vocal writing, added two orchestral interludes and toned down the sexual explicitness, giving the result a new title and opus number. The revised version reached the stage of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre in Moscow in January 1963. Since the 1970s most houses have returned to the uncensored original.