What is Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District?
[[File:Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.jpg|thumb|310px|right|''Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District'' at the Teatro Comunale Bologna, December 2014, Svetlana Sozdateleva as Katerina L'vovna Izmailova, Director Dmitry Bertman, Helikon Opera Moscow.]] '''''Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District''''' ({{lang-ru|Леди Макбет Мценского уезда}}) is an [[opera]] by the [[Russia]]n composer [[Dmitri Shostakovich]]. It is one of the most important Russian operas of the [[20th century]]. The words for the opera (the “[[libretto]]”) were written by [[Alexander Preis]] who based them on a story by the Russian writer [[Nikolai Leskov]]. The opera has nothing to do with [[Shakespeare|Shakespeare’s]] [[Play (theatre)|play]] [[Macbeth]] except for the fact that it is about a woman like [[Lady Macbeth]] who is tempted to commit a [[murder]]. ==History of the opera== ''Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District'' was the second opera that Shostakovich wrote. It was first performed on 22 January 1934 at the [[Leningrad Maly Theatre]]. It was very successful and lots of people came to hear it. However, Shostakovich lived in difficult times. The [[dictator]] [[Josef Stalin]] was making life very difficult for creative people. He thought that music and all the other [[arts]] should praise and glorify their country (the [[Soviet Union]]). He did not allow people to express their own personal feelings. Anything that he did not like was called “[[formalist]]”. If Stalin did not like someone that person would not be allowed to work. They might even get sent to prison in [[Siberia]] where they were treated very badly. Many of them died. Stalin came to hear a performance of ''Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District''. However, he did not like it, and he left during the performance. A few days later an article was written in the newspaper ''[[Pravda]]'' about the opera. The article heading was: “Chaos instead of music”. It said that the opera was full of horrible music and noisy [[chord]]s. The opera was not allowed to be pe