Lady Macbeth von Mzensk

What a life! Katerina, freedom-loving and full of longing, is trapped in a patriarchal hell: to her husband she is just a potential mother, her father-in-law stalks and bullies her. Violence against women is the order of the day at the court of the old Russian merchant family. The young worker Sergei is also a perfidious macho - and yet he initially seems to Katerina to be paving the way for a new, happier life. She throws herself into an affair with him and from then on makes no compromises. In order not to have to let go of her supposed happiness with Sergei, she first kills her father-in-law, then her husband and finally marries her lover. But the newlyweds' honeymoon comes to a tragic end in a Siberian prison camp.
Director Ulrike Schwab brings the story to life from the perspective of the female protagonist - as a dark trip down memory lane in which reality, fantasy and dream blur into one another. This exceptional work is conducted by Nicholas Carter.


Opera in four acts and nine scenes
Libretto by the composer and Alexander Preis


by Dmitri Shostakovich