Theodor Adorno once described a true performance as ‘a copy of a non-existent original’. It is tempting to think that in the case of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District the original actually exists – it is Mstislav Rostropovich’s 1978 recording with Galina Vishnevskaya in the title-role (Warner, 5/79). It was followed by Myung-Whun Chung’s version from the Paris Opera from 1992, which is more symphonic and its Lady Macbeth (Maria Ewing), compared to Vishnevskaya, rather pale (DG, 12/93). Then there is Ingo Metzmacher’s live recording from 2009 from Vienna (Orfeo), with beautiful, cinematic-sounding orchestral playing and a strong but mostly non-Russian cast, who struggle with the language of the libretto.

Andris Nelsons’s album of Shostakovich’s tragic opera is a welcome addition to this list. The Boston Symphony Orchestra play superbly and the cast is excellent. Günther Groissböck as Boris radiates the strange stentorian strength of a village Wotan. Brenden Gunnell as Sergey is duly seductive and lyrically insolent. Maria Barakova’s Sonyetka has a charm that is hard to resist. Kristīne Opolais has a strong and convincingly overwhelming vision of Katerina Izmailova. Where Vishnevskaya is predatory, she is more of a cunning sorceress, well versed in the arts of both seduction and intimidation. When I go back to Rostropovich’s recording, in which the tragic and the lyrical are so ominously blended with the cynical and the circus-like, exposing Shostakovich’s dark humour, I can almost smell a Russian theatre with its unique blend of caviar canapés, freshly polished floors and heavy perfumes that patrons keenly wear. It is a very theatrical version, with a great vocal actress, a queen of drama in the title-role. Opolais is much more direct, as if acting for a camera that is close to her most of the time.

In general, Nelsons’s version is more like a crime series in nine tableaux, as you might find on a popular streaming service. In Act 4 Sergey gets more explicitly carnal, when he sings to Sonyetka ‘Lyublyu tebya, khochu tebya’. My Sikorski Verlag piano reduction says here: ‘Lyublyu tebya, lyublyu tebya’ – ie ‘I love you, I love you’ and not ‘I love you, I want you’. It is a small detail. But it can make a big difference to a modern audience.