Maria Ewing, Orchestre de l'Opéra Bastille, Myung-Whun Chung - Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District (1993)

This opera is a study in the psychopathology of everyday life. It exposes the kind of brutal manners familiar in naturalistic novels after the Goncourts and Zola, but Shostakovich had the misfortune of running afoul of the official Soviet position that criminality and pathology couldn't exist in the workers' paradise. Maria Ewing's strength isn't pure vocalism; anyone can find fault on technical grounds. But she is a passionate, involving actress with her voice, and she makes our anti-heroine chillingly desperate and driven--every moment is haunted. The supporting cast joins in with a broadly vicious portrayal of a spider's den passing for normal home life.

I don't know Russian, so I can't judge what might be wrong with Ewing's performance in the lead role, but to my ears this whole production is excellent: Chung's conducting catches the gritty, pointed mood of Shostakovich's writing and the murderous kitchen-sink melodrama is drawn with appealing luridness. I don't love Lady Macbeth, but comparing this version side by side with the acclaimed Rostropovich set on EMI, I plump for the DG as histrionics and the EMI as authentic Russianness.