★★★★☆
The plots of operas are ludicrous, aren’t they? I mean, imagine a world in which deranged Russians went round poisoning each other and then made black comedy out of it afterwards.
True, Katerina Ismailova, the “Lady Macbeth” of Shostakovich’s 1934 opera, disposes of Boris, her father-in-law, by a rather more traditional substance than novichok. She garnishes his mushrooms with rat poison. Then she and her lover, Sergey, strangle her husband and (in this production) decapitate him with an axe.
Such bloody deeds could be horrifying, and in many stagings they are. The remarkable thing about Richard Jones’s 2004 production, now zestily revived by the Royal Opera, is that he has the audience shaking not with horror but laughter.
Is that what Shostakovich wanted? The