THE CHANGING FACES OF SHOSTAKOVICH AND HIS "LADY MACBETH"

"History is bunk," said Henry Ford, himself now a historical figure with his own accretion of myths.

No completely honest portrait of Dmitri Shostakovich, the composer of the Mariinsky Theater's upcoming "Katerina Izmailova," was published during his lifetime. After the composer's death, Solomon Volkov at one stroke boldly refocused the question, and further muddied the waters, with his publication in the West of "Testimony -- The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich."

Who was this Shostakovich? Was he really the Communist Party's composer-cum-lapdog? He remained in Russia after the October Revolution, whereas Stravinsky and Prokofiev had found shelter in Paris. His Second and Third Symphonies celebrated Red October and the First of May, respectively. He wrote music for "The Bedbug," a play by the aggressively Soviet poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky. He wrote the bulk of his Leningrad Symphony while in the besieged city, working in a fire brigade, and "The Song of the Forests" in praise of a reforestation project. His Eleventh and Twelfth Symphonies are musical depictions of the years 1905 and 1917, respectively.

Or was he a closet dissident, an intellectual and artist who found his public duties as "communist court composer" distasteful, but one who represented the sturdy moral and spiritual strength of the Russian people, surviving even under the communist yoke and lash?

The real Shostakovich is not to be recognized from either of these extreme portraits, according to Irina Molostova, stage director for the Mariinsky Theater's forthcoming production of Shostakovich's "Katerina Izmailova." Molostova, who is currently the artistic director of the Kiev Opera and Ballet, was enlisted by the Mariinsky to direct "Katerina" on the strength of her personal experience with Shostakovich while preparing the Kiev premiere of the opera, thirty years ago.

The composer attended not only the premiere, but the three preceding rehearsals as well. Molostova received more than twenty letters in the composer's hand. The composer Molostova remembers does not tally with either of the above reckonings. "They're too political," she explains. "Shostakovich was not a political man, he was a frightened man. He was a father, and was afraid of what might happen to his children."

Shostakovich's early career was resplendent with success. The year 1934 saw the production of a major opera, "The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District," based on Leskov's novella.

The opera opened in Leningrad's Maly Opera on January 22, 1934 under the name of its heroine, "Katerina Izmailova." Soon an impressive number of Western opera-houses took interest, including New York's Metropolitan Opera. Although the opera was hailed at first as "the greatest achievement of Soviet operatic art," Shostakovich's first big fright was directly related to "Lady Macbeth" and its high profile.

On January 27, 1936 Stalin went to the Bolshoy to see the jewel of Soviet opera. An impressive number of Western opera-houses had already mounted productions of the opera, including New York's Metropolitan Opera. "The next day," Molostova recounts, "Pravda printed the article 'Chaos instead of Music'."

The article roundly condemned the opera. Shostakovich's very success was cited against him, because the opera "tickled the perverted tastes of the bourgeois audience by its jittery, noisy and neurotic music," according to Pravda. The composer drew fire for sympathizing with a "heroine" who is a murderess. The article also pointedly raised the question of whether the opera's success didn't result from its "confused and politically neutral ideology." Here, clearly, Comrade Shostakovich was not a good Communist.

The actual impact of this article is difficult to gauge. Volkov and others point to it as a thunderbolt that blasted the composer. In Moscow, the opera was dropped from the repertory. On the other hand, "Katerina" continued to play in Leningrad, and the article had no effect on Shostakovich's teaching post at the Conservatory. This supports the view of others that the article really didn't mean that much.

Even in those days before the Stalinist Terror, Pravda had a reputation for not confining itself to the facts. In any event, Shostakovich himself did not simply brush the article off as a bad review. "Imagine how he must have felt," Molostova explains. "He was terrified of the police. H