Lady Macbeth of MtsenskIngela Brimberg as Katerina Izmailova
Dmitri Shostakovich · First performed Leningrad, 1934
Shostakovich's searing portrait of a woman trapped in a loveless marriage who kills to be free.
The opera
Shostakovich based his opera on a story by Nikolai Leskov. Katerina Izmailova, a merchant's wife in provincial Russia, is bored and lonely in her marriage and bullied by her father-in-law Boris. She falls for the new labourer Sergei and begins an affair with him.
When Boris catches them, Katerina poisons him, and together the lovers murder her husband. Their crime is discovered at their wedding, and both are sent to a prison camp in Siberia. There Sergei turns away from her to another prisoner, and Katerina, in despair, drags her rival with her into a freezing river.
Ingela Brimberg as Katerina Izmailova
Ingela Brimberg made her role debut as Katerina at Oper Leipzig in 2024.
Reviews
“Eine Sensation als Katerina ist Ingela Brimberg, die alle Töne ihrer Riesenpartie beißt, attackiert, metallisch flutet und in ihrer unüberbrückbaren Einsamkeit ans Herz rührt.”Ingela Brimberg is a sensation as Katerina: she bites into and attacks every note of her enormous part, floods it with metal, and in her unbridgeable loneliness touches the heart.