Trivial brilliance

Each time I see Shostakovich’s once controversial opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk I am impressed by what brilliant performances it seems to incite, fascinated by it dramatically and musically, but left unsatisfied by its unevenness and what I think is finally its incoherence. As far as productions go, it is hard to imagine that any could be more compelling than Richard Jones’s at the Royal Opera, and what is amazing is that it has improved considerably since its triumphant first run in 2004. There are probably very few operas which so suit Jones’s temperament, offering him every opportunity to juxtapose the hideous and the tender, the grotesque and the painful, high spirits and terminal torpor. When he doesn’t find these and other ingredients, he mercilessly throws them in anyway, as he did most notably in the Ring. He has no taste for the sublime or the beautiful, and in Lady Macbeth there is no room for either.