Shostakovich will open La Scala’s 2025/2026 season: a powerful statement entrusted to the original 1934 version of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Not just an opening title, but a manifesto - music that scratches, theater that doesn’t flinch. At its center is Katerina, a young wife who - together with her lover - kills her husband and tyrannical father-in-law, ending in a final catastrophe in Siberia. It’s a fierce melodrama about domestic and social violence, conceived by the composer as the first chapter of an unfinished trilogy on the condition of women in Russia. The opera’s history is the stuff of legend: international triumph after St. Petersburg, then Stalin’s long shadow - he attended a performance in Moscow in 1936 and unleashed the infamous Pravda attack (“Chaos instead of Music”), branding the work and its author. Years later came the Katerina Izmailova version (1963), but Milan now receives the razor’s edge of the original: Riccardo Chailly in the pit and the La Scala debut of director Vasily Barkhatov on stage. Between black satire, eros, and brutality, Shostakovich builds a sonic novel that alternates lyricism with symphonic sneers: an opera that still burns, speaking of power, desire, and guilt with a candor that feels necessary today.
Every facet of the Bvlgari Hotel Milano is luminous with the warmth and wonder of the season, blending Italian tradition with exceptional style.
