Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1932) was more a personal than a political drama. All was well for the first two years after the opera’s première in 1934, but shortly after Stalin went to a performance, it was vigorously condemned in the state press. The pretext was the opera’s music, but it is more likely that the plot and especially the staging offended against the conservative turn in the social morality now promoted by the state. When a revival became possible, Shostakovich chose to rework the opera, renaming it Katerina Izmailova.
Marina Frolova-Walker is Gresham Professor of Music. She is a Russian-born British musicologist and music historian. She is Professor of Music History and Director of Studies in Music at Clare College, Cambridge.
Professor Marina Frolova-Walker is a specialist in the Russian music of the 19th and 20th centuries. She has published extensively on Russian music and is a well-known lecturer and broadcaster for BBC Radio 3. Among her many awards and appointments, she is a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded the Edward Dent Medal in 2015 by the Royal Musical Association for her achievements in musicology.
She was appointed as Visiting Gresham Professor of Russian Music in 2018-19.
You can find more information on Marina and her research interests here: https://www.marinafrolova-walker.com/
Professor Frolova-Walker's lecture series are as follows:
2021/22 Music Under Stalin
2020/21 Russian Piano Masterpieces
2019/20 Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes
2018/19 Russian Opera and the State (as Visiting Gresham Professor of Russian Music)
All lectures by the Gresham Professors of Music can be accessed here.
