Flemish Opera, Antwerp Some say it was Stalin himself who wrote the Pravda critique of this work that concluded with the chilly words “… things could end badly for this composer” and shut down Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1934 opera in a hurry. The perspicacious reviewer, whoever it was, had perceived the opera’s ironic apotheosis in the character Sergei of homo sovieticus, a creation of perfect moral vacuity, bred to lie and betray at every turn. It is based on an 1865 story by Nikolai Leskov, here updated in typical style by director Calixto Bieito to a post-industrial wreckage, ankle-deep in mud, with a dead-souled Ikea house and some kind of silo looming behind. Katerina’s husband goes off on business, she instantly cops off with workman Sergei; her fath