Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District

Katerina Izmailova is the name of the heroine in Nikolai Leskov's novella and Dmitry Shostakovich's opera; a name that has become synonymous with her character. A strong, commanding, and beautiful woman who commits a terrible crime for the sake of her lover: a heart-wrenching story based on real events that took place in Imperial Russia.

In Chernyakov's "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District," there is no trace of antiquity. On the stage, we see a typical office, a familiar environment for both the Russian and the 21st-century German and French characters. But Katerina is an outsider here, a guest from the "third world" that both the Russian and the French observe with equal trepidation and desire. The Katerina in this production may be a distant relative of the ancient Medea. The performance is about the power of fate and the power of passion, forces that cannot be hidden behind the façade of Euro-renovation.