Stalin visits the opera


           In the early 1930s Shostakovich wrote his second opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. This opera was his redemption. When it was performed for the first time in 1934 it was immediately a hit. Various journalists and music critics praised it as true work of a composer brought up in soviet culture. Everything was going perfectly until early 1936.
On January 8, 1936, Stalin took a rare visit to the opera to see Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District with Shostakovich directing. After the 3rd (of 4) act Stalin and his entourage left without speaking with Shostakovich or anyone else. The next day in the paper called Pravda there was an article written, ordered by Stalin, that was called Muddle Instead of Music. The article claimed that the opera was "deliberately dissonant, muddled stream of sounds...(that) quacks, hoots, pants and gasps." Because the rules word was law the other newspaper companies and music critics who enjoyed Shostakovich’s opera had to denounce it as terrible or face the wrath of the government. For the next 30 years the opera was banned from being performed in the Soviet Union.
On February 6 of the same year Shostakovich was berated again by the Pravda for his ballet called The Limpid Stream because "it jangles and expresses nothing" and it did not represent true life of peasants on the collective farm. Shostakovich was terrified of being arrested and jailed or executed, which was not uncommon at this time, and so he requested an appointment with the Chairman of the USSR State Committee on Culture, Platon Kerzhentsev, who officially told Salin and Molotov that he had told Shostakovich that he should, “reject formalist errors and in his art, attain something that could be understood by the broad masses”. Shostakovich was not allowed to write in his own style. He was being forced by the government to write in a style that they approved of.


Does anybody have any ideas on how I can incorporate narrative into this section of my i-Search essay?

Comments

  1. Van GundersenApril 26, 2018 at 6:39 PM

    Initially clicked on your blog because the title seemed very interesting, and it was an interesting read. I knew the USSR was repressive but not to that degree, and an example of that is great. I don't hear a single thing about YOU though, which I would love. Maybe bring up why this topic interests you or your opinions on it? Also I'd make it a bit longer as it was quite the short read.

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