La Scala Opens Season With Russian Opera: Art Over Politics

High culture often claims to float above the messy trenches of geopolitics, but Milan’s Teatro alla Scala seems intent on testing that theory. For the second time since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of Europe’s most prestigious opera houses is rolling out the red carpet for a Russian work to kick off its gala season. It is a bold, arguably defiant programming choice that forces the audience to ask: Can we separate the art from the aggressor?

The choice for Sunday’s premiere is Dmitry Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” conducted by music director Riccardo Chailly. This event is not just a night at the opera; it is the Super Bowl of the European cultural calendar, drawing the elite from politics, business, and the arts. The optics here are tricky. While the Ukrainian community—who protested loudly during the 2022 premiere of “Boris Godunov”—did not announce separate protests this year, the tension has merely shifted, not evaporated.

The Italian left-wing party +Europa has organized a flash mob to coincide with the arrival of dignitaries. However, their angle is nuanced. Rather than condemning the performance, they are leveraging the opera’s history against the current Kremlin narrative. Shostakovich’s opera was famously blacklisted by Joseph Stalin in 1936, marking the beginning of the Great Purge. The protesters argue that the work exposes the abuse of power, aiming to “draw attention to the defense of liberty and European democracy, threatened today by Putin’s Russia.” Due to security concerns, authorities have shuffled these demonstrators from the main square to a location behind City Hall.

From an industry perspective, La Scala’s management is playing a high-stakes game of cultural diplomacy. The theater’s new general manager, Fortunato Ortombina, stood firm on the programming inherited from his predecessor. His defense? “Music is fundamentally superior to any ideological conflict.” Ortombina went a step further, asserting that “Shostakovich, and Russian music more broadly, have an authority over the Russian people that exceeds Putin’s own.”

It is a sentiment echoed by Chailly, who began working on this production two years ago. He views the staging as “a must,” noting that the opera “has long suffered, and needs to make up for lost time.” This follows the 2022 precedent set by the Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov gala, which was attended by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, both of whom attempted to thread the needle by distinguishing Russia’s rich cultural history from its current political regime.

On stage, the production promises to be as intense as the discourse surrounding it. Stage director Vasily Barkhatov has updated the setting from a 19th-century village to a cosmopolitan Russian city in the 1950s, amidst the dying days of Stalin’s regime. Barkhatov describes the narrative as a “personal tragedy” rather than a purely political one, set against a backdrop of Art Deco interiors and interrogation rooms. He grimly noted that “statistics show that a lot of people die on their way to happiness and freedom.”

The weight of the production falls on American soprano Sara Jakubiak, making her La Scala debut in the title role of Katerina. It is a grueling vocal marathon. “I’m singing 47 high B flats in one night,” Jakubiak noted during preparations. Chailly joked that he was “squeezing” her like an orange to get the performance right, though Jakubiak claims they share a similar, studious approach to the score. “You go, ‘Oh my gosh, how will I do this?’ But you manage… Yes, we’re just going to go for the ride.”

As the curtain rises Sunday, La Scala is betting that the brilliance of Shostakovich will drown out the noise outside. It is a testament to the institution’s belief that art can transcend the news cycle—or at least, that the show must go on, regardless of who is watching from the picket line.