FROM AROUND THE WORLD: BUENOS AIRES.(Review)

The Teatro Colon opened its 2001 opera season on March 30 with a stupendous new production of Shostakovich's master-work, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Its music, predominantly descriptive, is alternately aggressive, ironic, abrasively satiric or lyrically emotive, according to the plot and the characters' feelings. Intense primary colors, incisive rhythms and wild dissonances spout from a rich, powerfully orchestrated score. The opera had its Buenos Aires premiere in 1968, in its modified, second version, as Katerina Ismailova (a more apt title, since Shostakovich's heroine and Shakespeare's don't resemble each other). The present production, directed by Sergio Renan and formidably conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich, promises to be far more memorable.

Renan's production used multimedia projections and imaginative yet natural, at times highly realistic stage direction. Renan transformed the drama's rather common subject (unfaithful woman kills her husband and father-in-law, then is discovered and punished) into an impressive tragedy and an exciting show. He placed the orchestra center stage, and the action developed in the proscenium, on two staircases at each side of the stage, and on a platform upstage, behind the orchestra. Along the rear wall of the stage was a giant screen, on which some scenes were "televised" as they occurred.

Rostropovich supplemented the orchestra with additional brass that played sometimes in groups separate from the rest, sometimes from the sides of the auditorium. This ...