“The Royal Opera’s sexually charged production of Lady Macbeth reignites one of our most burning cultural conundrums – the ‘Shostakovich Question’... The ‘Shostakovich Question’ is a debate is over the relationship between the composer and the triad of Stalinism, Mother Russia and Shostakovich’s own deep humanism. It asks: why did Shostakovich remain in the USSR, while others like Stravinsky left? Was he obliged by a love of country to acknowledge, if not accept, the government? Or was his life torn between a public and private self? Indeed, was every musical phrase a thread woven through a tortured tapestry of dissent, a passionate but coded cry of opposition?

The ‘Shostakovich Question’ was blown open by the publication in 1979 of Testimony, by defector Solomon Volkov, who claimed his text was a memoir based on conversations with Shostakovich prior to the composer’s death four years earlier, ostensibly confirming that Shostakovich’s music was indeed coded dissent against Soviet totalitarianism.” —Observer.UK