Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth at the bedside of King Duncan (Lady Macbeth by George Cattermole, 1850)
Creator	William Shakespeare
Play	Macbeth
Date	c.1603–1607
Source	Holinshed's Chronicles (1587)
Family	Macbeth (husband)
Role	Goads her husband into committing regicide
Quote	Out, damned spot! Out, I say! (5.1)
Portrayed by	Sarah Siddons Charlotte Melmoth Helen Faucit Ellen Terry Francesca Annis Vivien Leigh Glenda Jackson Judith Anderson Judi Dench Jeanette Nolan Keeley Hawes Ixsys Perroni

Lady Macbeth is a fictional character in Shakespeare's Macbeth (c.1603–1607). She is the wife to the play's protagonist, Macbeth, a Scottish nobleman. After goading him into committing regicide, she becomes Queen of Scotland, but later suffers pangs of guilt for her part in the crime. She dies off-stage in the last act, an apparent suicide.

The character's origins lie in the accounts of Kings Duff and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of Britain familiar to Shakespeare. Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth appears to be a composite of two separate and distinct personages in Holinshed's work: Donwald's nagging, murderous wife in the account of King Duff, and Macbeth's ambitious wife in the account of King Duncan.

Lady Macbeth is a powerful presence in the play, most notably in the first two acts. Following the murder of King Duncan, however, her role in the plot diminishes. She becomes an uninvolved spectator to Macbeth's plotting, and a nervous hostess at a banquet dominated by her husband's hallucinations. Her fifth act sleepwalking scene is a turning point in the play, and her line, "Out, damned spot!," has become a phrase familiar to most speakers of the English language. The report of her death late in the fifth act provides the inspiration for Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech.

Analysts see in the character of Lady Macbeth the conflict between femininity and masculinity, as they are impressed in cultural norms. Lady Macbeth suppresses her instincts toward compassion, motherhood, and fragility — associated with femininity — in favour of ambition, ruthlessness, and the singleminded pursuit of power. This conflict colours the entire drama, and sheds light on gender-based preconceptions from Shakespearean England to the present.

The role has attracted countless notable actresses over the centuries, including Sarah Siddons, Charlotte Melmoth, Helen Faucit, Ellen Terry, Vivien Leigh, Glenda Jackson, Francesca Annis, Judith Anderson, Renée O'Connor, Judi Dench and Keeley Hawes. Jeanette Nolan played the character in Orson Welles' 1948 film adaptation.

Role in the play[link]

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth by John Singer Sargent, 1889

Lady Macbeth makes her first appearance with late in scene five of the first act when she learns in a letter from her husband that three witches have prophesied his future as King. When King Duncan becomes her overnight guest, Lady Macbeth seizes the opportunity to effect his murder. Aware her husband's temperament is "too full o' the milk of human kindness" for committing a regicide, she plots the details of the murder, then, countering her husband's arguments and reminding him that he first broached the matter, she belittles his courage and manhood, finally winning him to her designs.

The King retires after a night of feasting. Lady Macbeth drugs his attendants and lays daggers ready for the commission of the crime. Macbeth kills the sleeping King while Lady Macbeth waits nearby. When he brings the daggers from the King's room, his Lady orders him to return them to the scene of the crime. He refuses. She carries the daggers to the room and smears the drugged attendants with blood. The couple retire to wash their hands.

Following the murder of King Duncan, Lady Macbeth's role in the plot diminishes. When Duncan's sons flee the land in fear for their own lives, Macbeth is appointed King. Without consulting his Queen, Macbeth plots other murders in order to secure his throne, and, at a royal banquet, the Queen is forced to dismiss her guests when Macbeth hallucinates. In her last appearance, she sleepwalks in profound torment. She dies off-stage, with suicide being suggested as its cause when Malcolm declares that she died by "self and violent hands."^[1]

Sleepwalking scene[link]

The Sleepwalking Lady Macbeth by Johann Heinrich Füssli, late 18th century. (Musée du Louvre)

The sleepwalking scene^[2] is one of the most celebrated scenes from Macbeth, and, indeed, in all of Shakespeare. It has no counterpart in Shakespeare's source material for the play, Holinshed's Chronicles, but is solely the Bard's invention.

A.C. Bradley indicates that, with the exception of the scene's few closing lines, the scene is entirely in prose with Lady Macbeth being the only major character in Shakespearean tragedy to make a last appearance "denied the dignity of verse." According to Bradley, Shakespeare generally assigned prose to characters exhibiting abnormal states of mind or abnormal conditions such as somnambulism, with the regular rhythm of verse being inappropriate to characters having lost their balance of mind or subject to images or impressions with no rational connection. Lady Macbeth's recollections – the blood on her hand, the clock striking, her husband's reluctance – are brought forth from her disordered mind in chance order with each image deepening her anguish. For Bradley, Lady Macbeth's "brief toneless sentences seem the only voice of truth" with the spare and simple construction of the character's diction expressing a "desolating misery."^[3] Lady Macbeth's compulsive washing of her hands to rid them of blood is reminiscent of hand washing common among sufferers from Obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Analyses of the role[link]

Lady Macbeth as anti-mother[link]

Stephanie Chamberlain in her article "Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England" argues that though Lady Macbeth wants power, her power is “conditioned on maternity”, which was a “conflicted status in early modern England.” Chamberlain argues that the negative images of Lady Macbeth as a mother figure (like when she discusses bashing the brain of the babe that sucks her breast) reflect controversies concerning the image of motherhood in early modern England. In early modern England, mothers were often accused of hurting the innocent lives that were placed in their hands. Lady Macbeth then personifies all mothers of early modern England who were condemned for Lady Macbeth’s fantasy of infanticide. Lady Macbeth’s fantasy, Chamberlain argues, is not struggling to be a man, but rather struggling with the condemnation of being a bad mother that was common during that time.^[4]

Jenijoy La Belle takes a slightly different view in her article, "A Strange Infirmity: Lady Macbeth’s Amenorrhea." La Belle states that Lady Macbeth does not wish for just a move away from femininity; she is asking the spirits to eliminate the basic biological characteristics of womanhood. The main biological characteristic that La Belle focuses on is menstruation. La Belle argues that by asking to be "unsex[ed]" and crying out to spirits to “make thick [her] blood / Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,” Lady Macbeth asks for her menstrual cycle to stop. By having her menstrual cycle stop, Lady Macbeth hopes to stop any feelings of sensitivity and caring that is associated with females. She hopes to become like a man to stop any sense of remorse for the regicide. La Belle furthers her argument by connecting the stopping of the menstrual cycle with the persistent infanticide motifs in the play. La Belle gives examples of "the strangled babe" whose finger is thrown into the witches’ cauldron (4.1.30); Macduff’s babes who are "savagely slaughter’d" (4.3.205); and the suckling babe with boneless gums whose brains Lady Macbeth would dash out (1.7.57–58) to argue that Lady Macbeth represents the ultimate anti-mother: not only would she smash in a baby’s brains but she would go even further to stop her means of procreation altogether.^[5]

Lady Macbeth as witch[link]

Some literary critics and historians argue that not only does Lady Macbeth represent an anti-mother figure in general, she also embodies a specific type of anti-mother: the witch. Critic Joanna Levin defines a witch as a woman who succumbs to Satanic force, a lust for the devil, and who, either for this reason or the desire to obtain supernatural powers, invokes (evil) spirits. English physician Edward Jorden published Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother in 1603, in which he speculated that this force literally derived from the female sexual reproductive organs. Because no one else had published any other studies on the susceptibility of women, especially mothers, to becoming both the witch and the bewitched (i.e. demonically possessed), Jorden's findings helped create the foundation for the views popularized during the Renaissance about the relationship between women and witchcraft. Levin refers to Marianne Hester's Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of Male Domination, in which Hester articulates a feminist interpretation of the witch as an empowered woman. Levin summarises the claim of feminist historians like Hester: the witch should be a figure celebrated for her nonconformity, defiance, and general sense of empowerment; witches challenged patriarchal authority and hierarchy, specifically "threatening hegemonic sex/gender systems." This view associates witchcraft — and by extension, Lady Macbeth — not with villainy and evil, but with heroism.

Jenijoy La Belle assesses Lady Macbeth's femininity and sexuality as they relate to motherhood, and witchhood as well. The fact that she conjures spirits likens her to a witch, and the act itself establishes a similarity in the way that both Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters from the play "use the metaphoric powers of language to call upon spiritual powers who in turn will influence physical events — in one case the workings of the state, in the other the workings of a woman's body." Like the witches, Lady Macbeth strives to make herself an instrument for bringing about the future^[5] She proves herself a defiant, empowered nonconformist, and an explicit threat to a patriarchal system of governance in that, through challenging his masculinity, she manipulates Macbeth into murdering King Duncan. Despite the fact that she calls him a coward, Macbeth remains reluctant, until she asks: "What beast wasn't, then, that made you break this enterprise to me? / When you durst do it, then you were a man; / And to be more than what you were, you would / Be so much more the man." Thus Lady Macbeth enforces a masculine conception of power, yet only after pleading to be unsexed, or defeminised. The Weird Sisters are also depicted as defeminised, androgynous figures. They are bearded (1.3.46), (which may also be associated with Lady Macbeth's amenorrhea). Witches were perceived as an extreme type of anti-mother, even considered capable of cooking and eating their own children. Although Lady Macbeth may not express violence toward her child with that same degree of grotesqueness, she certainly expresses a sense of brutality when she states that she would smash the babe's head.

Lady Macbeth and gender stereotyping[link]

Some critics identify gender stereotyping in the play's suggestion that Lady Macbeth must suppress her female instincts in order to become ambitious and violent.

Christina León Alfar claims that even though scholars argue that Lady Macbeth's desire for spirits to "unsex" her violates gender norms, she has been falsely accused of being the source of violence in the play. Alfar contends that while it is commonly held that Lady Macbeth is the driving force of Macbeth’s "bloody desire," she also falls victim to the tendency to attack strong female characters. She argues that Lady Macbeth never asserts her own desires or ambitions; she merely encourages her husband's desire to be king.^[6]

Unlike Alfar, some critics claim that Lady Macbeth is, in fact, the source of violence in the play. Carolyn Asp explains in her article, "'Be bloody, bold and resolute': Tragic Action and Sexual Stereotyping in Macbeth" that Lady Macbeth openly attempts to reject her feminine traits and adopt a male mentality because she perceives that her society associates feminine qualities with weakness.^[6] Likewise, Robert Kimbrough argues in his article "Macbeth: The Prisoner of Gender" that in Elizabethan literature, especially Macbeth, there is the idea that to be "manly" is to be aggressive, daring, bold, resolute, and strong, especially in the face of death. And to be "womanly" is to be gentle, fearful, pitying, wavering, and soft, a condition signified by tears.^[7] He also argues that Lady Macbeth wants to become cruel, which she considers to be a masculine trait. However, in order for her to become cruel she must cut off the flow of blood to her heart, which is the seat of love, the source of "remorse," pity and compassion which are all attributes of human nature.

According to Asp, societal stereotypes play a major role in Lady Macbeth’s issue with gender. She is convinced that she must divest herself of her femininity if she is to have any effect on her husband’s public life.^[8] However, in spite of her constant efforts to take on male traits, her unconscious feminine traits rise to the surface just before the murder of Duncan. When addressing her husband Lady Macbeth refers to him as “thy love” (1.7.39) and challenges his self-image as a male, the foundation of his other roles.^[8] When Lady Macbeth challenges Macbeth’s manhood she is ultimately saying that in order to be king, the heroic warrior, he must take on the persona of a man, along with her.^[8] Therefore, only if Macbeth dares to kill Duncan will he be a man, in the eyes of Lady Macbeth; so much more than a man as she says "to be the same in [his] own act and valour / As [he is] in desire (1.7.40–41).

The British actress Sarah Siddons, one of the leading tragic actresses of the 18th century, wrote that in her interpretation, Lady Macbeth has at once subjugated all her femininity to ambition, and at the same time maintained her feminine attractiveness to Macbeth: "Such a combination only, respectable in energy and strength of mind, and captivating in feminine loveliness, could have composed a charm of such potency as to fascinate the mind of a hero so dauntless, a character so amiable, so honourable as Macbeth.^[9]

Performance history[link]

John Rice, a boy actor with the King's Men, may have played Lady Macbeth in a performance of what was likely Shakespeare's tragedy at the Globe Theatre on 20 April 1611. The performance was witnessed and described by Simon Forman in his manuscript The Book of Plays and Notes thereof per Formans for Common Policy. His account, however, does not establish whether the play was Shakespeare's Macbeth or a work on the same subject by another dramatist.^[10] The role may have been beyond the talents of a boy actor and may have been played by a man in early performances.^[11]

In the mid-18th century, Hannah Pritchard played Lady Macbeth opposite David Garrick's Macbeth. She was, in Thomas Davies' words, "insensible to compunction and inflexibly bent on cruelty."^[10]

Sarah Siddons starred in John Philip Kemble's 1794 production at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and offered a psychologically intricate portrait of Lady Macbeth in the tradition of Hannah Pritchard. Siddons was especially praised for moving audiences in the sleepwalking scene with her depiction of a soul in profound torment. Siddons and Kemble furthered the view established by Pritchard and Garrick that character was the essence of Shakespearean drama.^[10]

William Hazlitt commented on Siddons' performance:

In speaking of the character of Lady Macbeth, we ought not to pass over Mrs. Siddons's manner of acting that part. We can conceive of nothing grander. It was something above nature. It seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine; she was tragedy personified. In coming on in the sleeping-scene, her eyes were open, but their sense was shut. She was like a person bewildered and unconscious of what she did. Her lips moved involuntarily — all her gestures were involuntary and mechanical. She glided on and off the stage like an apparition. To have seen her in that character was an event in every one's life, not to be forgotten.

Helen Faucit was critiqued by Henry Morley, a professor of English literature in University College, London, who thought the actress "too demonstrative and noisy" in the scenes before Duncan's murder with the "Come, you spirits" speech "simply spouted" and its closing "Hold! Hold!" shouted in a "most unheavenly manner." In the "I have given suck" speech, he thought Faucit "poured out" the speech in a way that recalled the "scold at the door of a gin-shop." Faucit, he believed, was "too essentially feminine, too exclusively gifted with the art of expressing all that is most beautiful and graceful in womanhood, to succeed in inspiring anything like awe and terror." He thought her talents more congenial to the second phase of the character, and found her "admirably good" in the banquet scene. Her sleepwalking scene, however, was described as having "the air of a too well-studied dramatic recitation."^[12]

In 1884 at the Gaiety Theatre, Sarah Bernhardt performed the sleepwalking scene barefoot and clad in a clinging nightdress, and, in 1888, a critic noted Ellen Terry was "the stormy dominant woman of the eleventh century equipped with the capricious emotional subltety of the nineteenth century."

In 1915 and 1918, Sybil Thorndike played the role at Old Vic and then at the Prince's Theatre in 1926. Flora Robson played the role in Tyrone Guthrie's Old Vic production in 1934. In 1955, Vivien Leigh played Lady Macbeth opposite Laurence Olivier at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. In 1977 at The Other Place in Stratford, Judi Dench and Ian McKellen played the infamous husband and wife in Trevor Nunn's production. Notable Lady Macbeths in the late 20th century included Judith Anderson, Pamela Brown, Diana Wynyard, Simone Signoret and Janet Suzman.

In 2009, Pegasus Books published The Tragedy of Macbeth Part II, a play by American author and playwright Noah Lukeman which endeavoured to offer a sequel to Macbeth and to resolve its many loose ends, particularly Lady Macbeth’s reference to her having had a child. Written in blank verse, the play was published to critical acclaim.

Jeanette Nolan performed the role in Orson Welles' 1948 film adaptation and was critiqued by Bosley Crowther in the New York Times of 28 December 1950: "The Lady Macbeth of Jeanette Nolan is a pop-eyed and haggard dame whose driving determination is as vagrant as the highlights on her face. Likewise, her influence upon Macbeth, while fleetingly suggested in a few taut lines and etched in a couple of hot embraces, is not developed adequately. The passion and torment of the conflict between these two which resides in the play has been rather seriously neglected in this truncated rendering."^[13] Michael Costello of Allmovie has described her performance as "uneven" and has also stated, "Her unique Lady Macbeth is either an exhibition of rank scenery-chewing or a performance of intriguingly Kabuki-like stylization."

See also[link]

• Female Gender roles

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Lady MacBeth and the Daemonologie of Hysteria
• Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work
• Women's Fantasy of Manhood: A Shakespearian Theme

External links[link]

• Macbeth: Folio Version
• Macbeth: Full-text online
• List of all appearances and all mentions of Lady Macbeth in the play.

Sir Trevor Robert Nunn, CBE (born 14 January 1940) is an English theatre, film and television director. Nunn has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He has directed musicals and dramas for the stage, as well as opera. His well-known musicals are Cats (1981) and Les Misérables (1985). His dramas include Nicholas Nickleby and Macbeth. He has been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical, the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical, winning the Tony Award (Musical) for Les Misérables and the Olivier Award for Summerfolk / The Merchant of Venice / Troilus and Cressida; and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

Early years[link]

Nunn was born in Ipswich, England, to Robert Alexander Nunn, a cabinetmaker, and Dorothy May Piper.^[1] He was educated at Northgate Grammar School, Ipswich and Downing College, Cambridge, where he began his stage career. He won a Director's Scholarship, becoming a trainee director at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry in 1962.^[2]

Career[link]

In 1964 Nunn joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and in 1968 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a position he held until 1986.^[2] He became Artistic Director of the Royal National Theatre in September 1997.^[2]

His first wife, Janet Suzman, appeared in many of his productions, such as the 1974 televised version of his Antony and Cleopatra.^[3] Nunn became a leading figure in theatrical circles, and was responsible for many ground-breaking productions, such as the RSC's version of Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, co-directed with John Caird,^[2] and a 1976 musical adaptation of the Shakespeare play The Comedy of Errors.^[4][5]

A very successful director of musicals, in the non-subsidised sector, Nunn directed the musical Cats (1981),^[6] formerly the longest running musical in Broadway's history, and the first English production of Les Misérables in 1985, also with John Caird, which has been running continuously in London since opening.^[2][7] Nunn also directed the little-known 1986 Webber–Rice musical Cricket, at Windsor Castle.^[8] Besides Cats and Les Misérables Nunn's other musical credits include Starlight Express^[9] and Sunset Boulevard.^[10] Later London credits include My Fair Lady,^[11] South Pacific (at the Royal National Theatre),^[12]The Woman In White,^[13]Othello and Acorn Antiques The Musical (2005),^[14]The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Rock 'n' Roll^[15] and Porgy and Bess in 2006 at the Savoy Theatre (an abridged version with dialogue instead of recitatives, unlike Nunn's first production of the opera).^[16]

Nunn directed the RSC production of Macbeth starring Ian McKellen in the title role and Dame Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth in 1976.^[17] Nunn staged the action of the drama with not only the paying audience, but also the audience of all of the actors in the production not in the ongoing scene—they sat on wooden crates just beyond the main playing space.^[18]

He directed his wife's (Imogen Stubbs), play We Happy Few in 2004.^[19] Stubbs often appears in his productions, including the 1996 Twelfth Night film. Nunn directed a modern production of Shakespeare's Hamlet in 2004, which starred Ben Whishaw in the title role, and Imogen Stubbs as Gertrude, and was staged at the Old Vic Theatre in London.^[20]

In 2007 he directed the RSC productions of King Lear and The Seagull, which played at Stratford before embarking on a world tour (including the Brooklyn Academy of Music) and then playing at the New London Theatre from November 2007. The two plays both starred Ian McKellen, Romola Garai, Frances Barber, Sylvester McCoy, and William Gaunt.^[21] Nunn's television production of King Lear was screened on Boxing Day, 2008 with McKellen in the title role.^[22]

In 2008 he returned to The Belgrade Theatre in Coventry (the theatre where he started his career) to direct Joanna Murray-Smith's adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's film Scenes from a Marriage starring Imogen Stubbs and Iain Glen.^[23] His musical adaptation of Gone With The Wind opened at the New London Theatre in April 2008 and, after poor reviews, closed on 14 June 2008 after 79 performances.^[24] In December 2008, he directed a revival of A Little Night Music at the Menier Chocolate Factory, which transferred to the West End at the Garrick Theatre in 2009.^[25] The production transferred to Broadway, opening in November 2009, with Catherine Zeta-Jones as Desiree Armfeldt and Angela Lansbury as Madame Armfeldt. Other members of the original London cast also transferred with the production. The production closed in January 2011 after 425 performances.^[26]

In 2010, Nunn directed a revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Aspects of Love from July to September 2010 at the Menier Chocolate Factory^[27] and the play Birdsong, which opened in September 2010 at the Comedy Theatre, based on the Sebastian Faulks novel of the same title.^[28]

Nunn marked his debut as Artistic Director of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, with a revival of Flare Path (as part of the playwright, Terrence Rattigan's, centenary year celebrations). The production, starring Sienna Miller, James Purefoy and Sheridan Smith, opened in March 2011 and closed in June 2011,^[29] and was followed by productions of Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, (June - August 2011)^[30] and The Tempest, starring Ralph Fiennes (September - October 2011).^[31] His final production at the Haymarket, The Lion in Winter (November 2011 - January 2012), stars Joanna Lumley and Robert Lindsay.^[32]

Film and opera[link]

Nunn has directed opera at Glyndebourne. He re-staged his highly successful Gyndebourne production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess for television in 1993,^[2] and was highly praised.^[33][34]

He has directed for film, including Lady Jane (1986), Hedda, an adaptation of Hedda Gabler, and a 1996 film version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.^[35]

Personal life[link]

Nunn has been married three times. He was married to actress Janet Suzman from October 17, 1969 until their divorce in 1986. They have one child, Joshua. The Times reported in April 1986: "Janet Suzman, aged 47, the actress, was granted a divorce in London yesterday from Trevor Nunn, aged 46, the theatre director ... They have a son, Joshua, aged five."^[36][37] He has another two children, Laurie and Amy, with his second wife, Sharon Lee-Hill; they divorced in 1991. According to The Times, "Trevor Nunn, the theatre director, was divorced yesterday by his wife Sharon Lee Hill."^[38][39][40]

In 1994, Nunn married actress Imogen Stubbs with whom he has two children, Ellie and Jesse. The Press Association reported on September 18, 1994: "Director Trevor Nunn and actress Imogen Stubbs, who wed in secret at a London register office on Saturday, had their marriage blessed today in a low-key service at a village church."^[41] In April 2011 Stubbs announced that she and Sir Trevor were to separate.^[40]

He was knighted in 2002.^[39]

In 1998 Nunn was named in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the Labour Party (UK).^[42]

Credits[link]

Broadway[link]

Source: Internet Broadway Database Listing^[43]

• A Little Night Music - 13 December 2009 - 20 June 2010, re-opened 13 July 2010
• Rock 'n' Roll - 4 November 2007 – 9 March 2008
• Les Misérables (revival) - 9 November 2006 – 6 January 2008
• The Woman in White - 17 November 2005 – 19 February 2006
• Chess - 22 September 2003 (Benefit Concert)
• Vincent in Brixton (as original producer) - 6 March 2003 – 4 May 2003
• Oklahoma! - 21 March 2002 – 23 February 2003
• Noises Off (as original producer) - 1 November 2001 – 1 September 2002
• Rose Written by Martin Sherman (as original producer) - 12 April 2000 – 20 May 2000
• Copenhagen (as original producer) - 11 April 2000 – 21 January 2001
• Amy's View (as original producer) - 15 April 1999 – 18 July 1999
• Closer (as original producer) - 25 March 1999 – 22 August 1999
• Not About Nightingales - 25 February 1999 – 13 June 1999
• Arcadia - 30 March 1995 – 27 August 1995
• Sunset Boulevard - 17 November 1994 – 22 March 1997
• Aspects of Love - 8 April 1990 – 2 March 1991
• Chess - 28 April 1988 – 25 June 1988
• Starlight Express - 15 March 1987 – 8 January 1989
• Les Misérables - 12 March 1987 – 18 May 2003
• The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby - 24 August 1986 – 12 October 1986
• André DeShield's Harlem Nocturne (Featuring songs with lyrics by Trevor Nunn) - 18 November 1984 – 30 December 1984
• Cyrano de Bergerac (as original producer) - 16 October 1984 – 19 January 1985
• Much Ado About Nothing (as original producer) - 14 October 1984 – 16 January 1985
• All's Well that Ends Well - 13 April 1983 – 15 May 1983
• Good (as original producer) - 13 October 1982 – 30 January 1983
• Cats - 7 October 1982 – 10 September 2000
• The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby - 4 October 1981 – 3 January 1982
• Piaf - 5 February 1981 – 28 June 1981
• London Assurance (as original producer) - 5 December 1974 – 12 January 1975
• Sherlock Holmes (as original producer) -12 November 1974 – 4 January 1976
• Old Times (as original producer) - 16 November 1971 – 26 February 1972
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (as original producer) - 20 January 1971 – 13 March 1971

West End[link]

Source: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust^[44]

• The Lion In Winter - 2011
• Flare Path - 2011
• Birdsong - 2010
• Aspects of Love - 2010
• A Little Night Music - 2009
• Inherit The Wind - 2009
• Gone with the Wind - 2008
• King Lear - 2007
• The Seagull - 2007
• Porgy and Bess - 2006
• Acorn Antiques: The Musical! - 2005
• The Woman in White - 2004
• Anything Goes - 2002
• South Pacific - 2001
• My Fair Lady - 2001
• Oklahoma! - 1998
• Sunset Boulevard -1993
• The Baker's Wife - 1989
• Aspects of Love - 1989
• Chess - 1986
• Les Misérables - 1985
• Starlight Express - 1984
• Cats - 1981

Film[link]

Source: Contemporary British and Irish film Directors^[35]

• Twelfth Night: Or What You Will (director and adaptation) (1996)
• Lady Jane (director) (1986)
• Hedda (director and adaptation) (1976)

Television[link]

• King Lear (2008 TV Movie)
• The Merchant of Venice (2001 TV movie)
• Oklahoma! (1999 TV movie)
• Porgy and Bess (1993 TV movie)
• Othello (1990 TV movie)
• The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1982 TV mini-series)
• The Three Sisters (1981 TV movie)
• BBC2 Playhouse (TV series) - (1 episode, 1979)
• Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1979)

Awards and nominations[link]

Sources: Internet Broadway Database Listing^[43] Tony Awards Database (broadwayworld.com)^[45] Drama Desk History^[46] Olivier Awards, Past Nominees and Winners^[47]

• 2002 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical – Oklahoma! [nominee]
• 2002 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical – Oklahoma! [nominee]
• 2002 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement
• 2001 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director - The Cherry Orchard [nominee]
• 2000 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director- Summerfolk / The Merchant of Venice / Troilus and Cressida [winner]
• 1999 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director - Oklahoma! [nominee]
• 1999 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play – Not About Nightingales [nominee]
• 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play – Not About Nightingales [winner]
• 1995 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical– Sunset Boulevard [nominee]
• 1995 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director- The Merchant of Venice / Summerfolk [winner]
• 1995 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical– Sunset Boulevard [nominee]
• 1994 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director - Arcadia [nominee]
• 1990 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical– Aspects of Love [nominee]
• 1987 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical– Les Misérables [winner]
• 1989 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director - Othello [nominee]
• 1987 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical– Starlight Express [nominee]
• 1983 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical– Cats [winner]
• 1983 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play– All's Well that Ends Well [nominee]
• 1983 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play– All's Well that Ends Well [winner]
• 1982 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play– The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby [winner]
• 1981 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director - Cats [nominee]
• 1980 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director- The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby [winner]
• 1979 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director - Once in a Lifetime [nominee]
• 1977 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director - Macbeth [nominee]
• 1975 Drama Desk Award Unique Theatrical Experience – London Assurance [winner]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Trowbridge, Simon: The Company: A Biographical Dictionary of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Editions Albert Creed (2010) ISBN 978-0-9559830-2-3

External links[link]

• Trevor Nunn at the Internet Broadway Database
• Trevor Nunn at the Internet Movie Database
• The Company: A Biographical Dictionary of the RSC: Online database
• Scenes from a Marriage preview
• Michael Jackson's Peter Pan obsession - by Trevor Nunn 2009

Shirley Verrett (May 31, 1931 – November 5, 2010)^[1] was an African-American operatic mezzo-soprano who successfully transitioned into soprano roles i.e. soprano sfogato. Verrett enjoyed great fame from the late 1960s through the 1990s, particularly well known for singing the works of Verdi and Donizetti.

Early life and education[link]

Born into an African-American family of devout Seventh-day Adventists in New Orleans, Louisiana, Verrett was raised in Los Angeles, California. She sang in church and showed early musical abilities,^[2] but initially a singing career was frowned upon by her family. Later Verrett went on to study with Anna Fitziu and with Marion Szekely Freschl at the Juilliard School in New York. In 1961 she won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

International career[link]

In 1957, Verrett made her operatic debut in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. In 1958, she made her New York City Opera debut as Irina in Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars. In 1959, she made her European debut in Cologne, Germany in Nabokov's Rasputins Tod. In 1962, she received critical acclaim for her Carmen in Spoleto, and repeated the role at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1963, and at the NY City Opera in 1964 (opposite Richard Cassilly and Norman Treigle). Verrett first appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1966 as Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera.

She appeared in the first concert ever televised from Lincoln Center in 1962,^[3] and also appeared that year in the first of the Leonard Bernstein Young People's Concerts ever televised from that venue, in what is now Avery Fisher Hall.

She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1968, with Carmen, and at La Scala in 1969 in Samson and Dalila. Verrett's mezzo roles included Cassandra and Didon (Berlioz's Les Troyens)-including the Met premiere, when she sang both roles in the same performance, Giuseppe Verdi's Ulrica, Amneris, Eboli, Azucena, Saint-Saëns' Dalila, Donizetti's Elisabetta I in "Maria Stuarda", Leonora in La favorita, Gluck's Orpheus, and Rossini's Neocles (L'assedio di Corinto) and Sinaide in Moïse. Many of these roles were recorded, either professionally or privately.

Beginning in the late 1970s she began to tackle soprano roles, including Selika in L'Africaine, Judith in Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, Lady Macbeth Macbeth, Madame Lidoine in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites (Met1977), Tosca, Norma ( from Boston 1976 till Messina 1989), Aida (Boston 1980 and 1989), Desdemona (Otello) (1981), Leonore (Fidelio) (Met 1983), Iphigénie (1984–85), Alceste (1985), Médée (Cherubini) (1986).. Her Tosca was televised by PBS on Live from the Met in December 1978, just six days before Christmas. She sang the role opposite the Cavaradossi of Luciano Pavarotti.^[4]

In 1990, Verrett sang Dido in Les Troyens at the inauguration of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, and added a new role at her repertoire: Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana in Sienna. In 1994, she made her Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, playing Nettie Fowler.

In 1996 Verrett joined the faculty of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance as a Professor of Voice and the James Earl Jones University Professor of Music. The preceding year at the National Opera Association Gala Banquet and Concert honoring Mattiwilda Dobbs, Todd Duncan, Camilla Williams and Robert McFerrin, Verrett said: "I'm always so happy when I can speak to young people because I remember those who were kind to me that didn't need to be. The first reason I came tonight was for the honorees because I needed to say this. The second reason I came was for you, the youth. These great people here were the trailblazers for me. I hope in my own way I did something to help your generation, and that you will help the next. This is the way it's supposed to be. You just keep passing that baton on!"^[5]

Autobiography[link]

In 2003, Shirley Verrett published a memoir, I Never Walked Alone (ISBN 0-471-20991-0), in which she spoke frankly about the racism she encountered as a black person in the American classical music world. When the conductor Leopold Stokowski invited her to sing with the Houston Symphony in the early 1960s, he had to rescind his invitation when the orchestra board refused to accept a black soloist. Stokowski later made amends by giving her a prestigious date with the much better known Philadelphia Orchestra.^[6]

Death[link]

Verrett died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, aged 79, on November 5, 2010 from heart failure following an undisclosed illness.^[7]

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Stryker, Mark (November 6, 2010). "Shirley Verrett: One of opera's greats". Detroit Free Press. http://www.freep.com/article/20101106/ENT04/11060471/1322/Shirley-Verrett-One-of-operas-greats#ixzz14bPtFlKl. Retrieved November 7, 2010. 
• "Shirley Verrett". Telegraph. November 7, 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/8115979/Shirley-Verrett.html. Retrieved November 7, 2010. 

External links[link]

• Shirley Verrett's website
• University of Michigan faculty page
• Discography (Capon's Lists of Opera Recordings)
• An appreciation
• Highlights from Verrett's discography with analysis and discussion by F. Paul Driscoll

Dmitri Shostakovich in 1942

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich Russian pronunciation: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ˈdmʲitrʲɪɪvʲɪt͡ɕ ʂəstɐˈkovʲɪt͡ɕ] (Russian: Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович;^[1] 25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet Russian composer and pianist and was one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.

Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Leon Trotsky's chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Nevertheless, he received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947–1962) and the USSR (from 1962 until death).

After a period influenced by Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, Shostakovich developed a hybrid style, as exemplified by Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934). This single work juxtaposed a wide variety of trends, including the neo-classical style (showing the influence of Stravinsky) and post-Romanticism (after Gustav Mahler). Sharp contrasts and elements of the grotesque^[2] characterize much of his music.

Shostakovich's orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti. Music for chamber ensembles includes 15 string quartets, a piano quintet, two pieces for a string octet, and two piano trios. His piano works include two solo sonatas, an early set of preludes, and a later set of 24 preludes and fugues. Other works include three operas, and a substantial quantity of film music.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Birthplace of Shostakovich (now School no. 267). Commemorative plaque at left

Born at 2 Podolskaya Ulitsa in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Shostakovich was the second of three children born to Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina. Shostakovich's paternal grandfather (originally surnamed Szostakowicz) was of Polish Roman Catholic descent (his family roots trace to the region of the town of Vileyka in Belarus), but his immediate forebears came from Siberia.^[3] His paternal grandfather, a Polish revolutionary in the January Uprising of 1863–4, had been exiled to Narim (near Tomsk) in 1866 in the crackdown that followed Dmitri Karakozov's assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II.^[4] When his term of exile ended, Boleslaw Szostakowicz decided to remain in Siberia. He eventually became a successful banker in Irkutsk and raised a large family. His son, Dmitriy Boleslavovich Shostakovich, the composer's father, was born in exile in Narim in 1875 and attended Saint Petersburg University, graduating in 1899 from the faculty of physics and mathematics. After graduation, Dmitriy Boleslavovich went to work as an engineer under Dmitriy Mendeleyev at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in Saint Petersburg. In 1903, he married Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, another Siberian transplant to the capital.^[4] Sofiya herself was one of six children born to Vasiliy Yakovlevich Kokoulin, a Russian Siberian native.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a child prodigy as a pianist and composer, his talent becoming apparent after he began piano lessons with his mother at the age of nine. (On several occasions, he displayed a remarkable ability to remember what his mother had played at the previous lesson, and would get "caught in the act" of pretending to read, playing the previous lesson's music when different music was placed in front of him.)^[5] In 1918, he wrote a funeral march in memory of two leaders of the Kadet party, murdered by Bolshevik sailors.^[6]

In 1919, at the age of 13, he was allowed to enter the Petrograd Conservatory, then headed by Alexander Glazunov. Glazunov monitored Shostakovich's progress closely and promoted him.^[7] Shostakovich studied piano with Leonid Nikolayev, after a year in the class of Elena Rozanova, composition with Maximilian Steinberg, and counterpoint and fugue with Nikolay Sokolov, with whom he became friends.^[8] Shostakovich also attended Alexander Ossovsky's history of music classes.^[9] However, he suffered for his perceived lack of political zeal, and initially failed his exam in Marxist methodology in 1926. His first major musical achievement was the First Symphony (premiered 1926), written as his graduation piece at the age of nineteen.

Shostakovich in 1925

Early career[link]

After graduation, Shostakovich initially embarked on a dual career as concert pianist and composer, but his dry style of playing (his American biographer, Laurel Fay, comments on his "emotional restraint" and "riveting rhythmic drive") was often unappreciated. He nevertheless won an "honorable mention" at the First International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1927. After the competition Shostakovich met the conductor Bruno Walter, who was so impressed by the composer's First Symphony that he conducted it at its Berlin premiere later that year. Leopold Stokowski was equally impressed and gave the work its U.S. premiere the following year in Philadelphia and also made the work's first recording.

Thereafter, Shostakovich concentrated on composition, and soon limited his performances primarily to those of his own works. In 1927 he wrote his Second Symphony (subtitled To October), a patriotic piece with a great pro-Soviet choral finale. Due to its experimental nature, as with the subsequent Third Symphony, the pieces were not critically acclaimed with the enthusiasm as granted to the First.

1927 also marked the beginning of Shostakovich's relationship with Ivan Sollertinsky, who remained his closest friend until the latter's death in 1944. Sollertinsky introduced the composer to the music of Gustav Mahler, which had a strong influence on his music from the Fourth Symphony onwards.

While writing the Second Symphony, Shostakovich also began work on his satirical opera The Nose, based on the story by Gogol. In June 1929, the opera was given a concert performance, against Shostakovich's own wishes, and was ferociously attacked by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM).^[10] Its stage premiere on 18 January 1930 opened to generally poor reviews and widespread incomprehension amongst musicians.^[11]

Shostakovich composed his first film score for the 1929 silent movie, The New Babylon, set during the 1871 Paris Commune.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Shostakovich worked at TRAM, a proletarian youth theatre. Although he did little work in this post, it shielded him from ideological attack. Much of this period was spent writing his opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which was first performed in 1934. It was immediately successful, on both popular and official levels. It was described as "the result of the general success of Socialist construction, of the correct policy of the Party", and as an opera that "could have been written only by a Soviet composer brought up in the best tradition of Soviet culture."^[12]

Shostakovich married his first wife, Nina Varzar, in 1932. Initial difficulties led to a divorce in 1935, but the couple soon remarried when Nina became pregnant with their first child.^[13]

First denunciation[link]

In 1936, Shostakovich fell from official favour. The year began with a series of attacks on him in Pravda, in particular an article entitled, "Muddle Instead of Music". Shostakovich was away on a concert tour in Arkhangel’sk when he heard news of the first Pravda article. Two days before the article was published on the evening of 28 January,^[14] a friend had advised Shostakovich to attend the Bolshoi Theatre production of Lady Macbeth. When he arrived, he saw that Stalin and the Politburo were there. In letters written to Ivan Sollertinsky, a close friend and advisor, Shostakovich recounted the horror with which he watched as Stalin shuddered every time the brass and percussion played too loudly. Equally horrifying was the way Stalin and his companions laughed at the love-making scene between Sergei and Katerina. Eyewitness accounts testify that Shostakovich was "white as a sheet" when he went to take his bow after the third act.^[15]

The article, which condemned Lady Macbeth as formalist, "coarse, primitive and vulgar,"^[16] was thought to have been instigated by Stalin. Consequently, commissions began to fall off, and his income fell by about three quarters. Even Soviet music critics who had praised the opera were forced to recant in print, saying they "failed to detect the shortcomings of Lady Macbeth as pointed out by the Pravda".^[17] Shortly after the "Muddle Instead of Music" article, Pravda published another, "Ballet Falsehood," that criticized Shostakovich’s ballet The Limpid Stream. Shostakovich did not expect this second article because the general public and press already accepted this music as "democratic" - that is, tuneful and accessible. However, Pravda criticized The Limpid Stream for incorrectly displaying peasant life on the collective farm.^[18]

More widely, 1936 marked the beginning of the Great Terror, in which many of the composer's friends and relatives were imprisoned or killed: these included his patron Marshal Tukhachevsky (shot months after his arrest); his brother-in-law Vsevolod Frederiks (a distinguished physicist, eventually released but died before he got home); his close friend Nikolai Zhilyayev (a musicologist who had taught Tukhachevsky; shot shortly after his arrest); his mother-in-law, the astronomer Sofiya Mikhailovna Varzar (sent to a camp in Karaganda); his friend, the Marxist writer Galina Serbryakova (20 years in camps); his uncle, Maxim Kostrykin (died); and his colleagues Boris Kornilov and Adrian Piotrovsky (executed).^[19] His only consolation in this period was the birth of his daughter Galina in 1936; his son Maxim was born two years later.

Withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony[link]

The publication of the Pravda editorials coincided with the composition of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. The work was a great shift in style for the composer, due to the substantial influence of Gustav Mahler, as well as multiple Western-style elements. The symphony gave Shostakovich compositional trouble, as he attempted to reform his style into a new idiom. The composer was well into the work when the fatal articles appeared. Despite this, Shostakovich continued to compose the symphony and planned a premiere at the end of 1936. Rehearsals began that December, but after a number of rehearsals Shostakovich, for reasons still debated today, decided to withdraw the symphony from the public. A number of his friends and colleagues, such as Isaak Glikman, have suggested that it was in fact an official ban which Shostakovich was persuaded to present as a voluntary withdrawal.^[20] Whatever the case, it seems possible that this action saved the composer's life: during this time Shostakovich feared for himself and his family. Yet Shostakovich did not repudiate the work: it retained its designation as his Fourth Symphony. A piano reduction was published in 1946, and the work was finally premiered in 1961, well after Stalin's death.

During the years of 1936 and 1937, in order to maintain as low a profile as possible between the Fourth and Fifth symphonies, Shostakovich mainly composed film music, a genre favored by Stalin and lacking in dangerous personal expression.^[21]

"An artist's creative response to just criticism"[link]

The composer's response to his denunciation was the Fifth Symphony of 1937, which was musically more conservative than his earlier works. Premiering on 21 November 1937 in Leningrad, it was a phenomenal success: many in the Leningrad audience had lost family or friends to the mass executions. The Fifth drove many to tears and welling emotions. Later Shostakovich wrote in his memoirs: "I'll never believe that a man who understood nothing could feel the Fifth Symphony. Of course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about."^[22]

The success put Shostakovich in good standing once again. Music critics and the authorities alike, including those who had earlier accused Shostakovich of formalism, claimed that he had learned from his mistakes and had become a true Soviet artist. The composer Dmitry Kabalevsky, who had been among those who disassociated himself from Shostakovich when the Pravda article was published, praised the Fifth Symphony and congratulated Shostakovich for "not having given into the seductive temptations of his previous ‘erroneous’ ways."^[23]

It was also at this time that Shostakovich composed the first of his string quartets. His chamber works allowed him to experiment and express ideas which would have been unacceptable in his more public symphonic pieces. In September 1937, he began to teach composition at the Leningrad Conservatory, which provided some financial security but interfered with his own creative work.

Second World War[link]

In 1939, before the Soviet forces invaded Finland, the Party Secretary of Leningrad Andrei Zhdanov commissioned a celebratory piece from Shostakovich, entitled Suite on Finnish Themes to be performed as the marching bands of the Red Army would be parading through the Finnish capital Helsinki. The Winter War was a humiliation for the Red Army, and Shostakovich would never lay claim to the authorship of this work.^[24] It was not performed until 2001.^[25]

Lev A. Russov. The Leningrad Symphony. Conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky. 1980.

After the outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Germany in 1941, Shostakovich initially remained in Leningrad. He tried to enlist for the military but was turned away because he had bad eyesight. To compensate, Shostakovich became a volunteer for the Leningrad Conservatory’s firefighter brigade and delivered a radio broadcast to the Soviet people  listen (help·info). The photograph for which he posed was published in newspapers throughout the country.^[26]

But his greatest and most famous wartime contribution was the Seventh Symphony. The composer wrote the first three movements in Leningrad and completed the work in Kuibyshev, now a settlement in Volgograd Oblast, where he and his family had been evacuated. Whether or not Shostakovich really conceived the idea of the symphony with the siege of Leningrad in mind, it was officially claimed as a representation of the people of Leningrad’s brave resistance to the German invaders and an authentic piece of patriotic art at a time when morale needed boosting. The symphony was first premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and was soon performed abroad in London and the United States. However, the most compelling performance was by the Radio Orchestra in besieged Leningrad. The orchestra only had fourteen musicians left, so the conductor Karl Eliasberg had to recruit anyone who could play a musical instrument to perform the symphony.^[27]

In spring 1943, the family moved to Moscow. At the time of the Eighth Symphony's premiere, the tide had turned for the Red Army. Therefore the public, and most importantly the authorities, wanted another triumphant piece from the composer. Instead, they got the Eighth Symphony, perhaps the ultimate in sombre and violent expression within Shostakovich's output. In order to preserve the image of Shostakovich (a vital bridge to the people of the Union and to the West), the government assigned the name "Stalingrad" to the symphony, giving it the appearance of a mourning of the dead in the bloody Battle of Stalingrad. However, the symphony did not escape criticism. Shostakovich is reported to have said: "When the Eighth was performed, it was openly declared counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet. They said, 'Why did Shostakovich write an optimistic symphony at the beginning of the war and a tragic one now? At the beginning we were retreating and now we're attacking, destroying the Fascists. And Shostakovich is acting tragic, that means he's on the side of the fascists.'"^[28] The work was unofficially but effectively banned until 1956.^[29]

The Ninth Symphony (1945), in contrast, is an ironic Haydnesque parody, which intentionally failed to satisfy Stalin's demands for a "hymn of victory". The war was won, and Shostakovich’s "pretty" symphony was interpreted as a mockery of the Soviet Union’s victory rather than a celebratory piece. Shostakovich continued to compose chamber music, notably his Second Piano Trio (Op. 67), dedicated to the memory of Sollertinsky, with a bitter-sweet, Jewish-themed totentanz finale.

Second denunciation[link]

In 1948 Shostakovich, along with many other composers, was again denounced for formalism in the Zhdanov decree. Andrei Zhdanov, Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet, accused Shostakovich and other composers (such as Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian) for writing inappropriate and formalist music. This was part of an ongoing anti-formalism campaign intended to root out all Western compositional influence as well as any perceived "non-Russian" output. The conference resulted in the publication of the Central Committee’s Decree "On V. Muradeli’s opera The Great Friendship," which was targeted towards all Soviet composers and demanded that they only write "proletarian" music, or music for the masses. The accused composers, including Shostakovich, were summoned to make public apologies in front of the committee.^[30][31] Most of Shostakovich's works were banned, and his family had privileges withdrawn. Yuri Lyubimov says that at this time "he waited for his arrest at night out on the landing by the lift, so that at least his family wouldn't be disturbed."^[32]

The consequences of the decree for composers were harsh. Shostakovich was among those who were dismissed from the Conservatoire altogether. For Shostakovich, the loss of money was perhaps the largest blow. Others still in the Conservatory experienced an atmosphere that was thick with suspicion. No one wanted their work to be understood as formalist, so many resorted to accusing their colleagues of writing or performing anti-proletarian music.^[33]

In the next few years he composed three categories of work: film music to pay the rent, official works aimed at securing official rehabilitation, and serious works "for the desk drawer". The latter included the Violin Concerto No. 1 and the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry. The cycle was written at a time when the post-war anti-Semitic campaign was already under way, with widespread arrests including of I. Dobrushin and Yiditsky, the compilers of the book from which Shostakovich took his texts.^[34]

The restrictions on Shostakovich's music and living arrangements were eased in 1949, when Stalin decided that the Soviets needed to send artistic representatives to the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace in New York City, and that Shostakovich should be amongst them. For Shostakovich, it was a humiliating experience culminating in a New York press conference where he was expected to read a prepared speech. Nicolas Nabokov, who was present in the audience, witnessed Shostakovich starting to read "in a nervous and shaky voice" before he had to break off "and the speech was continued in English by a suave radio baritone".^[35] Fully aware that Shostakovich was not free to speak his mind, Nabokov publicly asked the composer whether he supported the then recent denunciation of Stravinsky's music in the Soviet Union. Shostakovich, who was a great admirer of Stravinsky and had been influenced by his music, had no alternative but to answer in the affirmative. Nabokov did not hesitate to publish that this demonstrated that Shostakovich was "not a free man, but an obedient tool of his government."^[36] Shostakovich never forgave Nabokov for this public humiliation.^[37] That same year Shostakovich was obliged to compose the cantata Song of the Forests, which praised Stalin as the "great gardener." In 1951 the composer was made a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of RSFSR.

Stalin's death in 1953 was the biggest step towards Shostakovich's rehabilitation as a creative artist, which was marked by his Tenth Symphony. It features a number of musical quotations and codes (notably the DSCH and Elmira motifs, Elmira Nazirova being a pianist and composer who had studied under Shostakovich in the year prior to his dismissal from the Moscow Conservatoire),^[38] the meaning of which is still debated, whilst the savage second movement, according to Testimony, is intended as a musical portrait of Stalin himself. The Symphony ranks alongside the Fifth and Seventh as one of his most popular works. 1953 also saw a stream of premieres of the "desk drawer" works.

During the forties and fifties Shostakovich had close relationships with two of his pupils: Galina Ustvolskaya and Elmira Nazirova. In the background to all this remained Shostakovich's first, open marriage to Nina Varzar until her death in 1954. He taught Ustvolskaya from 1937 to 1947. The nature of their relationship is far from clear: Mstislav Rostropovich described it as "tender". Ustvolskaya rejected a proposal of marriage from him after Nina's death.^[39] Shostakovich's daughter, Galina, recalled her father consulting her and Maxim about the possibility of Ustvolskaya being their stepmother.^[40] Ustvolskaya's friend, Viktor Suslin, said that she had been "deeply disappointed" in Shostakovich by the time of her graduation in 1947. The relationship with Nazirova seems to have been one-sided, expressed largely through his letters to her, and can be dated to around 1953 to 1956. He married his second wife, Komsomol activist Margarita Kainova, in 1956; the couple proved ill-matched, and divorced three years later.

In 1954, Shostakovich wrote the Festive Overture, opus 96, that was used as the theme music for the 1980 Summer Olympics.^[41] In addition his '"Theme from the film Pirogov, Opus 76a: Finale" was played as the cauldron was lit at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

In 1959, Shostakovich appeared on stage in Moscow at the end of a concert performance of his Fifth Symphony, congratulating Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for their performance (part of a concert tour of the Soviet Union). Bernstein recorded the symphony later that year in New York for Columbia Records.

Joining the Party[link]

The year 1960 marked another turning point in Shostakovich's life: his joining of the Communist Party. The government wanted to appoint him General Secretary of the Composer’s Union, but in order to hold that position Shostakovich was required to attain Party membership. It was understood that Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party from 1958 to 1964, was looking for support from the leading ranks of the intelligentsia in an effort to create a better relationship with the Soviet Union’s artists.^[42] This event has been interpreted variously as a show of commitment, a mark of cowardice, the result of political pressure, and as his free decision. On the one hand, the apparat was undoubtedly less repressive than it had been before Stalin's death. On the other, his son recalled that the event reduced Shostakovich to tears,^[43] and he later told his wife Irina that he had been blackmailed.^[44] Lev Lebedinsky has said that the composer was suicidal.^[45] Once he joined the Party, several articles denouncing individualism in music were published in Pravda under his name, though he did not actually write them. In addition, in joining the party, Shostakovich was also committing himself to finally writing the homage to Lenin that he had promised before. His Twelfth Symphony, which portrays the Bolshevik Revolution and was completed in 1961, was dedicated to Vladimir Lenin and called "The Year 1917."^[46] Around this time, his health also began to deteriorate.

Shostakovich's musical response to these personal crises was the Eighth String Quartet, composed in only three days. Shostakovich subtitled the piece, "To the victims of fascism and war",^[47] ostensibly in memory of the Dresden fire bombing that took place in 1945. Yet, like the Tenth Symphony, this quartet incorporates quotations from several of his past works and his musical monogram: Shostakovich confessed to Glikman, "I started thinking that if some day I die, nobody is likely to write a work in memory of me, so I had better write one myself."^[48] Several of Shostakovich's colleagues, including Natalya Vovsi-Mikhoels^[49] and the cellist Valentin Berlinsky^[50] were also aware of the Eighth Quartet's biographical intent.

In 1962 he married for the third time, to Irina Supinskaya. In a letter to his friend Isaak Glikman, he wrote, "her only defect is that she is 27 years old. In all other respects she is splendid: clever, cheerful, straightforward and very likeable."^[51] According to Galina Vishnevskaya, who knew the Shostakoviches well, this marriage was a very happy one: "It was with her that Dmitri Dmitriyevich finally came to know domestic peace... Surely, she prolonged his life by several years."^[52] In November Shostakovich made his only venture into conducting, conducting a couple of his own works in Gorky:^[53] otherwise he declined to conduct, citing nerves and ill health as his reasons.

That year saw Shostakovich again turn to the subject of anti-Semitism in his Thirteenth Symphony (subtitled Babi Yar). The symphony sets a number of poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the first of which commemorates a massacre of the Jews during the Second World War. Opinions are divided how great a risk this was: the poem had been published in Soviet media, and was not banned, but it remained controversial. After the symphony's premiere, Yevtushenko was forced to add a stanza to his poem which said that Russians and Ukrainians had died alongside the Jews at Babi Yar.

In 1965 Shostakovich raised his voice in defense of poet Joseph Brodsky, who was sentenced to five years of exile and hard labor. Shostakovich co-signed protests together with Yevtushenko and fellow Soviet artists Kornei Chukovsky, Anna Akhmatova, Samuil Marshak, and the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. After the protests the sentence was commuted, and Brodsky returned to Leningrad. Shostakovich joined the group of 25 distinguished intellectuals in signing the letter to Leonid Brezhnev asking not to rehabilitate Stalin.^{[citation needed]}

Later life[link]

Dmitri Shostakovich (center) with his wife Irina and Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev

In later life, Shostakovich suffered from chronic ill health, but he resisted giving up cigarettes and vodka. Beginning in 1958 he suffered from a debilitating condition that particularly affected his right hand, eventually forcing him to give up piano playing; in 1965 it was diagnosed as polio. He also suffered heart attacks the following year and again in 1971, and several falls in which he broke both his legs; in 1967 he wrote in a letter:

"Target achieved so far: 75% (right leg broken, left leg broken, right hand defective). All I need to do now is wreck the left hand and then 100% of my extremities will be out of order."^[54]

A preoccupation with his own mortality permeates Shostakovich's later works, among them the later quartets and the Fourteenth Symphony of 1969 (a song cycle based on a number of poems on the theme of death). This piece also finds Shostakovich at his most extreme with musical language, with twelve-tone themes and dense polyphony used throughout. Shostakovich dedicated this score to his close friend Benjamin Britten, who conducted its Western premiere at the 1970 Aldeburgh Festival. The Fifteenth Symphony of 1971 is, by contrast, melodic and retrospective in nature, quoting Wagner, Rossini and the composer's own Fourth Symphony.

Shostakovich died of lung cancer on 9 August 1975 and after a civic funeral was interred in the Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow. Even before his death he had been commemorated with the naming of the Shostakovich Peninsula on Alexander Island, Antarctica.

He was survived by his third wife, Irina; his daughter, Galina; and his son, Maxim, a pianist and conductor who was the dedicatee and first performer of some of his father's works. Shostakovich himself left behind several recordings of his own piano works, while other noted interpreters of his music include his friends Emil Gilels, Mstislav Rostropovich, Tatiana Nikolayeva, Maria Yudina, David Oistrakh, and members of the Beethoven Quartet.

Shostakovich's musical influence on later composers outside the former Soviet Union has been relatively slight, although Alfred Schnittke took up his eclecticism, and his contrasts between the dynamic and the static, and some of André Previn's music shows clear links to Shostakovich's style of orchestration. His influence can also be seen in some Nordic composers, such as Lars-Erik Larsson.^[55] Many of his Russian contemporaries, and his pupils at the Leningrad Conservatory, however, were strongly influenced by his style (including German Okunev, Boris Tishchenko, whose 5th Symphony of 1978 is dedicated to Shostakovich's memory, Sergei Slonimsky, and others). Shostakovich's conservative idiom has nonetheless grown increasingly popular with audiences both within and beyond Russia, as the avant-garde has declined in influence and debate about his political views has developed.

Music[link]

For a complete list, see List of compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich.

See also: Category:Compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich (thematical selection of works by Shostakovich).

Shostakovich's works are broadly tonal and in the Romantic tradition, but with elements of atonality and chromaticism. In some of his later works (e.g., the Twelfth Quartet), he made use of tone rows. His output is dominated by his cycles of symphonies and string quartets, each numbering fifteen. The symphonies are distributed fairly evenly throughout his career, while the quartets are concentrated towards the latter part. Among the most popular are the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies and the Eighth and Fifteenth Quartets. Other works include the operas Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Nose and the unfinished The Gamblers based on the comedy of Nikolai Gogol; six concertos (two each for piano, violin and cello); two piano trios; and a large quantity of film music.

Shostakovich's music shows the influence of many of the composers he most admired: Bach in his fugues and passacaglias; Beethoven in the late quartets; Mahler in the symphonies and Berg in his use of musical codes and quotations. Among Russian composers, he particularly admired Modest Mussorgsky, whose operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina he re-orchestrated; Mussorgsky's influence is most prominent in the wintry scenes of Lady Macbeth and the Eleventh Symphony, as well as in his satirical works such as "Rayok".^[56] Prokofiev's influence is most apparent in the earlier piano works, such as the first sonata and first concerto.^[57] The influence of Russian church and folk music is very evident in his works for unaccompanied choir of the 1950s.

Shostakovich's relationship with Stravinsky was profoundly ambivalent; as he wrote to Glikman, "Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise."^[58] He was particularly enamoured of the Symphony of Psalms, presenting a copy of his own piano version of it to Stravinsky when the latter visited the USSR in 1962. (The meeting of the two composers was not very successful, however; observers commented on Shostakovich's extreme nervousness and Stravinsky's "cruelty" to him.)^[59]

Many commentators have noted the disjunction between the experimental works before the 1936 denunciation and the more conservative ones that followed; the composer told Flora Litvinova, "without 'Party guidance' ... I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage."^[60] Articles published by Shostakovich in 1934 and 1935 cited Berg, Schoenberg, Krenek, Hindemith, "and especially Stravinsky" among his influences.^[61] Key works of the earlier period are the First Symphony, which combined the academicism of the conservatory with his progressive inclinations; The Nose ("The most uncompromisingly modernist of all his stage-works"^[62]); Lady Macbeth. which precipitated the denunciation; and the Fourth Symphony, described by Grove as "a colossal synthesis of Shostakovich's musical development to date".^[63] The Fourth Symphony was also the first in which the influence of Mahler came to the fore, prefiguring the route Shostakovich was to take to secure his rehabilitation, while he himself admitted that the preceding two were his least successful.^[64]

In the years after 1936, Shostakovich's symphonic works were outwardly musically conservative, regardless of any subversive political content. During this time he turned increasingly to chamber works, a field that permitted the composer to explore different and often darker ideas without inviting external scrutiny.^[65] While his chamber works were largely tonal, they gave Shostakovich an outlet for sombre reflection not welcomed in his more public works. This is most apparent in the late chamber works, which portray what Groves has described as a "world of purgatorial numbness";^[66] in some of these he included the use of tone rows, although he treated these as melodic themes rather than serially. Vocal works are also a prominent feature of his late output, setting texts often concerned with love, death and art.

Women's Rights[link]

Shostakovich's works have quite a few social justice themes. For example, in Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the protagonist is doomed by the patriarchal society, and the opera ends with her tragic death. Shostakovich had actually been brought up with feminism; his godmother, Klavdia Lukashevich, was a feminist activist and was also a powerful influence on the young Dmitri Shostakovich.^[67]

Jewish themes[link]

Even before the Stalinist anti-Semitic campaigns in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Shostakovich showed an interest in Jewish themes. He was intrigued by Jewish music’s "ability to build a jolly melody on sad intonations."^[68] Examples of works that included Jewish themes are the Fourth String Quartet (1949), the First Violin Concerto (1948), and the Four Monologues on Pushkin Poems (1952). He was further inspired to write with Jewish themes when he examined Moiser Beregovsky’s thesis on the theme of Jewish folk music in 1946.

In 1948, Shostakovich acquired a book of Jewish folk songs, and from this he composed the song cycle From Jewish Poetry. He initially wrote eight songs that were meant to represent the hardships of being Jewish in the Soviet Union. However in order to disguise this, Shostakovich ended up adding three more songs meant to demonstrate the great life Jews had under the Soviet regime. Despite his efforts to hide the real meaning in the work, the Union of Composers refused to approve his music in 1949 under the pressure of the anti-Semitism that gripped the country. From Jewish Poetry could not be performed until after Stalin’s death in March 1953, along with all the other works that were forbidden.^[69]

Posthumous publications[link]

In 2004, the musicologist Olga Digonskaya discovered a trove of Shostakovich manuscripts at the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture, Moscow. In a cardboard file were some "300 pages of musical sketches, pieces and scores" in the hand of Shostakovich. "A composer friend bribed Shostakovich's housemaid to regularly deliver the contents of Shostakovich's office waste bin to him, instead of taking it to the garbage. Some of those cast-offs eventually found their way into the Glinka. ... The Glinka archive 'contained a huge number of pieces and compositions which were completely unknown or could be traced quite indirectly,' Digonskaya said."^[70]

Among these were Shostakovich's piano and vocal sketches for a prologue to an opera, Orango (1932). They have been orchestrated by the British composer Gerard McBurney and this work was premiered in December 2011 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.^{[70][71][72][73][74]}

Criticism[link]

According to Shostakovich scholar Gerard McBurney, opinion is divided on whether his music is "of visionary power and originality, as some maintain, or, as others think, derivative, trashy, empty and second-hand."^[75] William Walton, his British contemporary, described him as "The greatest composer of the 20th century."^[76] Musicologist David Fanning concludes in Grove that, "Amid the conflicting pressures of official requirements, the mass suffering of his fellow countrymen, and his personal ideals of humanitarian and public service, he succeeded in forging a musical language of colossal emotional power."^[77]

Some modern composers have been critical. Pierre Boulez dismissed Shostakovich's music as "the second, or even third pressing of Mahler."^[78] The Romanian composer and Webern disciple Philip Gershkovich called Shostakovich "a hack in a trance."^[79] A related complaint is that Shostakovich's style is vulgar and strident: Stravinsky wrote of Lady Macbeth: "brutally hammering ... and monotonous."^[80] English composer and musicologist Robin Holloway described his music as "battleship-grey in melody and harmony, factory-functional in structure; in content all rhetoric and coercion."^[81]

In the 1980s, the Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen was critical of Shostakovich and refused to conduct his music. For instance, he said in 1987:

Shostakovich is in many ways a polar counter-force for Stravinsky. [...] When I have said that the 7th symphony of Shostakovich is a dull and unpleasant composition, people have responded: "Yes, yes, but think of the background of that symphony." Such an attitude does no good to anyone.^[82]

It is certainly true that Shostakovich borrows extensively from the material and styles both of earlier composers and of popular music; the vulgarity of "low" music is a notable influence on this "greatest of eclectics".^[83] McBurney traces this to the avant-garde artistic circles of the early Soviet period in which Shostakovich moved early in his career, and argues that these borrowings were a deliberate technique to allow him to create "patterns of contrast, repetition, exaggeration" that gave his music the large-scale structure it required.^[84]

Personality[link]

Shostakovich was in many ways an obsessive man: according to his daughter he was "obsessed with cleanliness";^[85] he synchronised the clocks in his apartment; he regularly sent cards to himself to test how well the postal service was working. Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (1994 edition) indexes 26 references to his nervousness. Mikhail Druskin remembers that even as a young man the composer was "fragile and nervously agile".^[86] Yuri Lyubimov comments, "The fact that he was more vulnerable and receptive than other people was no doubt an important feature of his genius".^[87] In later life, Krzysztof Meyer recalled, "his face was a bag of tics and grimaces".^[88]

In his lighter moods, sport was one of his main recreations, although he preferred spectating or umpiring to participating (he was a qualified football referee). His favourite football club was Zenit Leningrad, which he would watch regularly.^[89] He also enjoyed playing card games, particularly patience. He was fond of satirical writers such as Gogol, Chekhov and Mikhail Zoshchenko. The influence of the latter in particular is evident in his letters, which include wry parodies of Soviet officialese. Zoshchenko himself noted the contradictions in the composer's character: "he is ... frail, fragile, withdrawn, an infinitely direct, pure child ... [but he is also] hard, acid, extremely intelligent, strong perhaps, despotic and not altogether good-natured (although cerebrally good-natured)".^[90]

He was diffident by nature: Flora Litvinova has said he was "completely incapable of saying 'No' to anybody."^[91] This meant he was easily persuaded to sign official statements, including a denunciation of Andrei Sakharov in 1973; on the other hand he was willing to try to help constituents in his capacities as chairman of the Composers' Union and Deputy to the Supreme Soviet. Oleg Prokofiev commented that "he tried to help so many people that ... less and less attention was paid to his pleas."^[92] When asked if he believed in God, Shostakovich said "No, and I am very sorry about it."^[93]

Orthodoxy and revisionism[link]

Shostakovich represented himself in some works with the DSCH motif, consisting of D-E♭-C-B.

Shostakovich's response to official criticism and, what is more important, the question of whether he used music as a kind of covert dissidence is a matter of dispute. He outwardly conformed to government policies and positions, reading speeches and putting his name to articles expressing the government line.^[94] But it is evident he disliked many aspects of the regime, as confirmed by his family, his letters to Isaak Glikman, and the satirical cantata "Rayok", which ridiculed the "anti-formalist" campaign and was kept hidden until after his death.^[95] He was a close friend of Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was executed in 1937 during the Great Purge.

It is also uncertain to what extent Shostakovich expressed his opposition to the state in his music. The revisionist view was put forth by Solomon Volkov in the 1979 book Testimony, which was claimed to be Shostakovich's memoirs dictated to Volkov. The book alleged that many of the composer's works contained coded anti-government messages, that would place Shostakovich in a tradition of Russian artists outwitting censorship that goes back at least to the early 19th century poet Pushkin. It is known that he incorporated many quotations and motifs in his work, most notably his signature DSCH theme.^[96] His longtime collaborator Evgeny Mravinsky said that "Shostakovich very often explained his intentions with very specific images and connotations."^[97]

The revisionist perspective has subsequently been supported by his children, Maxim and Galina, and many Russian musicians. Volkov has further argued, both in Testimony and in Shostakovich and Stalin, that Shostakovich adopted the role of the yurodivy or holy fool in his relations with the government. Other prominent revisionists are Ian MacDonald, whose book The New Shostakovich put forward further revisionist interpretations of his music, and Elizabeth Wilson, whose Shostakovich: A Life Remembered provides testimony from many of the composer's acquaintances.

Tombstone of Shostakovich, showing his D-E♭-C-B motif. Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow.

Musicians and scholars including Laurel Fay^[98] and Richard Taruskin contest the authenticity and debate the significance of Testimony, alleging that Volkov compiled it from a combination of recycled articles, gossip, and possibly some information direct from the composer. Fay documents these allegations in her 2002 article 'Volkov's Testimony reconsidered',^[99] showing that the only pages of the original Testimony manuscript that Shostakovich had signed and verified are word-for-word reproductions of earlier interviews given by the composer, none of which are controversial. (Against this, it has been pointed out by Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov that at least two of the signed pages contain controversial material: for instance, "on the first page of chapter 3, where [Shostakovich] notes that the plaque that reads 'In this house lived [Vsevolod] Meyerhold' should also say 'And in this house his wife was brutally murdered'.")^[100] More broadly, Fay and Taruskin argue^{[citation needed]} that the significance of Shostakovich is in his music rather than his life, and that to seek political messages in the music detracts from, rather than enhances, its artistic value.

Recorded legacy[link]

A Russian stamp in Shostakovich's memory

In May 1958, during a visit to Paris, Shostakovich recorded his two piano concertos with André Cluytens, as well as some short piano works. These were issued by EMI on an LP, reissued by Seraphim Records on LP, and eventually digitally remastered and released on CD. Shostakovich recorded the two concertos in stereo in Moscow for Melodiya. Shostakovich also played the piano solos in recordings of the Cello Sonata, Op. 40 with cellist Daniil Shafran and also with Mstislav Rostropovich; the Violin Sonata, Op. 134, with violinist David Oistrakh; and the Piano Trio, Op. 67 with violinist David Oistrakh and cellist Miloš Sádlo. There is also a short sound film of Shostakovich as soloist in a 1930s concert performance of the closing moments of his first piano concerto. A colour film of Shostakovich supervising one of his operas, from his last year, was also made.^[101]

Awards[link]

Soviet Union

• Hero of Socialist Labor (1966)
• Order of Lenin (1946, 1956, 1966)
• Order of the October Revolution (1971)
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1940)
• Order of Friendship of Peoples (1972)
• People's Artist of the USSR (1954)
• People's Artist of the RSFSR (1948)
• International Peace Prize (1954)
• Lenin Prize (1958 - for the 11th symphony "1905")
• State Stalin Prize in arts (1941 - 1st class, for piano quintet; 1942 - 1st class, 7th ("Leningrad") Symphony; 1946 - 2nd class, a trio, 1948, 1949, 1949, 1949, 1950 - 1st class, for the music for the film Meeting on the Elbe, 1952 - 2nd class, 10 poems for chorus)
• USSR State Prize (1968 - for the poem "The Execution of Stepan Razin" for bass, chorus and orchestra)
• Glinka State Prize of the RSFSR (1974 - for the 14th string quartet and choral cycle "Fidelity")
• National Prize of Ukraine Taras Shevchenko (posthumously, 1976 - USSR State Prize named after Taras Shevchenko - for the opera "Katerina Ismailov," staged in KUGATOB Shevchenko)

Finland

• Sibelius Award (1958)

United States

• Oscar nomination for Khovanshchina, Best Score (Musical) in 1961

United Kingdom

• Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society (1966)

Austria

• Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria in Silver (1967)

Denmark

• Léonie Sonning Music Prize (1974)

List of compositions[link]

• List of compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich

Notes[link]