Katerina Izmailova (1966) Plot Summary Explained

Release, runtime and language

1966 · 118 mins · Russian

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Directed by

Mikhail Shapiro

Starring

Vera Titova, Tatyana Gavrilova, Aleksandr Sokolov, Nikolai Boyarsky, Lyubov Malinovskaya, Roman Tkachuk

The film adapts Shostakovich’s suppressed 1936 opera, starring Galina Vishnevskaya as Katerina, a 19th‑century farm wife who, by her lover, murders her husband and father‑in‑law. Both are sent to Siberia, where the lover soon leaves her for another woman. Banned by Stalin, it received no Russian staging for four decades, finally debuting at the Met in 1994; Shostakovich also wrote the screenplay.