Blues of the Fisherman’s Wife

There are a lot of fish in the Deutsche Oper’s new production of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Boris Timofeyevich, the domineering, sexually abusive patriarch of the Ismailov family carries two of them wherever he goes; when Zinovy Borisovich accuses his wife Katerina of infidelity, the scene escalates into the two of them hurling fish at one another; the choir were always holding onto fish and every so often would make them wriggle in an unsavoury manner. Yet the fish were no mere gimmick. They were just one of the many absurdist touches that contributed to transforming Shostakovich’s bleak drama into a production that was energetic, darkly comedic and thoroughly enjoyable. That this highly charged production –a co-production with Oslo’s Norske Opera– could also boast the extraordinary talents of Evelyn Herlitzius (as Katerina…