Product Details

• Actors: Markéta Hrubesová, Galina Vishnevskaya, Michal Dlouhý, Nicolai Gedda, Petr Hanicinec
• Directors: Petr Weigl
• Writers: Alexander Preis, Dmitri Shostakovich, Nikolai Leskov
• Format: Classical, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Image Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: July 20, 1999
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305473277
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,406 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk / Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya, Gedda, London Philharmonic" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The main complaint about this production is that there is not more of it. Part of Shostakovich's opera is left out, but what remains has a coherent dramatic impact, intensified by a heavy serving of graphically explicit, precisely choreographed sex and violence. This is a hybrid, like Petr Weigl's film of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, but more smoothly executed. It does not shift between spoken German and sung Italian like that curious, intriguing production, but Weigl has again taken an outstanding opera recording, cut it down, and used it as the soundtrack for a film, with Czech performers providing the visual dimension. It works more smoothly here than it did in Maria Stuarda. The musical and theatrical performances are both extraordinary. The lip synchronization to the Russian text is not always precise, but the physical gestures coordinate with and visually reinforce the musical effects. The scenery, costumes, and atmosphere are realistic and convincing, and they add a compelling dimension to the experience.

Musically, this Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is not likely to be surpassed in the foreseeable future. It is not true, as the back cover says, that Shostakovich wrote the title role for Galina Vishnevskaya; she was not quite 10 years old when it was written. But she and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich became close friends of Shostakovich, and their recording, with a carefully picked cast, is a basic document on how this opera should sound. With the enormous capacity of DVD, it should have been possible to include the whole sound recording on a separate track. But what has been included is powerful. --Joe McLellan

Product Description

This opera in four acts by Dmitri Shostakovich is based on an original story by Nikolai S. Leskov written in 1865. The action takes place in Mtsensk immediately before the Revolution in October 1917. The Ismailov family are rich landowners, and the household consists of Boris, who rules the house in a typically patriarchal manner, his weak son, Zinovy, and Zinovy's wife, Katerina. When Zinovy is away on business, Katherine starts an intense affair with the new farm hand, Sergei, which threatens their entire way of life in this powerful, passionate opera. This filmed opera by director Petr Weigl features the vocals of famed Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya as Katerina, a role written by Shostakovich expressly for her, and music conducted by her husband, Mstislav Rostropovich.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for What It Is, February 12, 2001

By 

Frank Dudley Berry, Jr. (Mountain View, Ca USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk / Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya, Gedda, London Philharmonic (DVD)

This performance is not original, but based on an abbreviated version of the Rostropovich/Vishnevskaya recording, the only one available. This score is one of the masterpieces of the 20th Century, a magnificent work. The movie brings it down to 100 minutes, presumably for manageable length. Anyone expecting to hear the whole score is going to be disappointed, but so what? This is not an opera that is frequently performed even in opera houses, so I'm grateful to the director for what there is.

Time Magazine, reviewing the opera at its Met premiere in 1934, referred to the music in the love/rape scenes as `pornophony'. The director certainly got that right. The prudish or the parents of a muscially gifted minor should be warned that these scenes leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. As both actors are attractive and the action is indicated in the music (Time was absolutely right), I found these scenes appropriate and interesting, as well as erotic.

The negative occurs in the staging of the finale. These must be the best dressed, most humanely treated Siberian exiles in history. No chains, no prison garb, none of the degradation of mind and spirit that motivates the heroine's suicide. The criticism here is precisely the opposite of the praise of the intimate scenes, that the staging and music do not match. All the more puzzling, as the scene is set out of doors and realism could have been easily achieved.

All in all, people who like the opera, who are fascinated by Shostakovich, or who simply want an approachable version of an masterpiece should have this disc. You're not likely to get another, and what's good in it is very good. The reviewer above who described this work musically as mediocre is not worthy of credence. Even the edited version here is musically superb.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ready for Soft-Core Shostakovich?, October 12, 1999

By 

davidhanddotnet (San Francisco, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk / Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya, Gedda, London Philharmonic (DVD)

This disc is not for everyone, but it may be just the thing for some. What's not clear until you pop it in the player is that the audio is essentially just the 1979 (?) Rostropovich/Vishnevskaya recording of the opera, so if you leave the TV off you essentially have a one-disc copy of that recording ... which I didn't, and so I am delighted with it on that basis alone. Turn on the set however, and things get wild. Director Petr Weigl has taken a cast of Czechs who may or may not have musical backgrounds, including a voluptuous and otherwise easy-on-the-eyes heroine, and had them lip-synch along with the recording in costume and on sets suggesting pre-Revolutionary Russia. The lip-synching isn't quite as laughable as some of the old Godzilla movies, but it's not always completely accurate and convincing, either. Added to that is the fact that Vishnevskaya's dusky, mature voice seems to be inappropriate to the twentysomething girl from whom it is supposedly emanating. But of course, none of that matters as soon as the sex gets started. I've never seen this opera staged, but I imagine that the ravishing is more "suggested" in the theatre, whereas here it's simulated explicitly, if not clinically, with lots of nudity and thrashing about. I'm reluctant to speculate about whether the late composer would have been more amused or annoyed by this video, probably dismissing it in either case as tasteless; more interesting is the question of what his still-very-much-alive close friends, Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, Galina Vishnevskaya, might make of it.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hot & Cold, September 15, 2001

By 

Brad Bombardier (Duluth, MN, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I found this video, of actors lip-synching to the Vishnevskaya/Rostropovich recording of the opera, to be very interesting in a number of ways, but also a bit disappointing. On the plus side, the actors are certainly not shy, with full frontal nudity of both men and women in the crucial sex scenes, which are energetic, to say the least. Katerina, the central character of the opera, is gorgeous, and emotes very well. On the minus side, the translations given in the subtitles are not always reliable, with some translations actually giving an opposite meaning to the sung text. There are large cuts, as the film runs only 100 minutes, but interest is maintained throughout. I thought the ending was anticlimactic in the extreme, and was somewhat disappointed. Overall, the film is a must for devoted fans of Dmitri Shostakovich, but I am still waiting for a definitive filmed version, which I believe we all deserve!