This is a disappointingly limp effort on behalf of what should be a supremely potent opera, whose first appearance on DVD deserved so much more. Admittedly we have had a short-lived DVD of Petr Weigl’s soft-core porn film version, mimed (rather well) to the soundtrack of Rostropovich’s famous 1978 recording (Carlton Entertainment, 11/00), but this was drastically cut to feature-film length and is therefore essentially a different work altogether. David Pountney’s late-1980s English-language production for English National Opera – vastly superior to the recent Covent Garden staging – was broadcast and would certainly merit transfer to DVD.

For his 2002 production, Stein Winge put on an unimaginative, would-be realist show, in which the characters spend far too much of the time standing around apparently unsure of what they should be doing or what the drama is about. There is no pace, no tension, no sense of oppression, horror, or yearning; in short no drama at all. To add insult to injury someone has taken it upon himself to order pointless bits of additional action between some of the scenes, probably the most crass coming between the Third and Fourth Acts, where a few minutes of Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony (composed seven years after the opera) are spliced in, to accompany nothing very special on stage. Winge also misses the point of those interludes in which such additions are arguably more legitimate. And he crazily divides the drama in the middle of Act 3, where the two DVDs also break, and at the end he has Katerina suffocate Sonetka, rather than drown with her. Whatever…

With the appearance of Evgeny Nesterenko as the Old Convict at the opening of the final prison-camp scene, there is a sudden injection of stage presence, though his voice now spreads rather alarmingly at the top. Otherwise the casting is only patchily effective. Neither Nadine Secunde as the central victim-turned-rebel-turned-victim, nor Christopher Ventris as the lover who promises her ascent but actually precipitates her downfall, sounds or looks remotely convincing, though Secunde certainly has the stamina for what is one of the most demanding of all soprano roles. Apart from anything else, their Russian is unconvincing. Anatoli Kotcherga brings considerable vocal stature to the role of Katerina Izmailova’s oppressive father-in-law, and Graham Clark as the Shabby Peasant and Maxim Mikhailov as the Priest are well worth hearing; but the director has given them so little to do beyond stereotyped gesturing and posing. Alexander Anissimov conducts for the most part rather stiffly, and he is quite unable to drive his forces forward when needed resulting in a fatal slackness in the musical pacing.

Anyone viewing this staging would surely wonder what the fuss about the work is, either artistically or politically. For enlightenment they might turn to EMI’s electronic booklet, but only if they have a computer with DVD-ROM drive and Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0, which I don’t. Otherwise there is no supporting material accessible from the DVD player itself or in printed form.