Lady Macbeth touches on many themes. I wouldn’t want to spend too much time on all the possible interpretations; after all, I’m not talking about myself in these pages and certainly not about my music. In the long run, you can just go to see the opera. In the last few years it’s been produced frequently, even abroad. Of course, all the productions are bad, very bad. In the last few years I can point out only one good production – in Kiev under the direction of Konstantin Simeonov, a conductor who has a wonderful feel for music. And he starts from the music, not the plot. When his singers started over-psychologizing their parts, Simeonov shouted: ‘What are you trying to do, set up the Moscow Art Theatre here? I need singing, not psychology. Give me singing!’/ They don’t understand that very well here, that singing is more important in opera than psychology. Directors treat the music in opera as something of minor importance. That’s how they ruined the film version, Katherina Izmailova. The actors were magnificent, particularly Galina Vishnevskaya, but you can’t hear the orchestra at all. Now what is the point of that? << less