Shostakovich's operatic masterpiece is notoriously problematic to stage, especially if directors go back to the 1932 score and try to present the action realistically, as these days they almost all seem hell-bent on doing. In fact a whole book has been written (in Russian) about the absurdities that result, with suggestions offered for combining all three principal versions (the 1935 first published score was already substantially different from the original).

For Netherlands Opera, Martin Kusej comes up with at least one effective ploy, which is to show the seduction scene through stroboscopic lighting. That really does solve a problem and add theatrical frisson, all in one go. Otherwise he produces a dreary, concept-driven, vaguely updated mish-mash. His declared aim is to present “the entire complex of Eros and sexuality when it is put under pressure from power and dependency structures”, as if that theme is not already blindingly and deafeningly obvious. This he does through indulging an apparent obsession with underpants (even the police station scene features them) and by adding absurdities of his own, such as having the Shabby Peasant drag Zinovi's body to the police and telling them that said body is in the Izmailovs' cellar, while we can all see it on his back. Worst of all, having Katerina ultimately lynched by her fellow convicts destroys the glimmer of compassion that is essential to the final scene, as well as making another mockery of the sung text.

There is some good singing and Jansons obtains classy orchestral playing. Visually the casting is poor. The “documentary film” is nothing more than a tedious retelling of the story through paraphrases from the director and his principal singers, intercut with illustrations from the production.

Mikhail Shapiro's 1966 film uses a cut version of Shostakovich's heavily revised score, prepared over several years but only finalised in 1963 and generally known as Katerina Izmailova. This excises the adult-rating sex and violence but otherwise has far more to be said in its favour than most people are inclined to these days. In its own early Brezhnev-era terms, the film itself is really rather fine. Vishnevskaya sings passionately, if unsubtly, and also acts well (her reminiscences of the whole filming process in her autobiography, Galina, make for compelling reading). For all the other roles the singing and acting are split, but in every case with superb results. Konstantin Simeonov paces the score with an acuity that many other conductors, including Jansons, could learn from.

Even given the extra cuts that reduce the opera to feature-film length, and the painfully close miking of Vishnevskaya's in any case somewhat raucous voice, the sense of dramatic truthfulness is more overwhelming than in any staging I have seen in the theatre or on video/DVD, with the exception of David Pountney's at English National Opera. Oh, for a DVD of that.