FIRST EDITION, ISSUED BEFORE THE PREMIERES, 4 volumes, oblong 8vo (c.20.8 x 29.5cm), 74, 97, 82 & 66 pages, each volume preceded by 2 leaves (titles, cast-lists and indices), crudely printed by "steklografia", title to Act 1 within simple borders, the text only in Russian, music on up to eleven staves per page, attested and dated at the end of each act ("corrected from the score: D. Lyubich-Yakovlev, checked and supplemented by the author 26/V/[1]933... This act corrected by the author [..]VI 1933", etc, translations), each act stapled separately, in a contemporary Russian card folder, browning to edges, but generally sound

D. Hulme, Dmitri Shostakovich. A Catalogue, Bibliography, and Discography, second edition (1991), p.68 (the British Library copy bears the stamp of J & W Chester, London).  Hulme's bibliography is the only one to mention this edition. L.E. Fay, 'From Lady Macbeth to Katerina: Shostakovich's versions and revisions', in D. Fanning, Shostakovich Studies (1995), pp.160-188.  D.D. Shostakovich, Lady Macbeth von Mzensk: Oper in 4 Akten (9 Bildern), Urfassung 1932 (Erstausgabe) (Hamburg: Sikorski, 1979).

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VERY RARE: There are no auction records for this early score, apparently produced in small numbers, a year before the premieres and two years before the first public edition by Muzgiz.  We have traced four copies in the West, one being incomplete. There are copies in the Library of Congress and at Harvard (John Ward collection).  The only copy we have traced so far in a European institution, the British Library, lacks the index and final seven leaves of Act 2; it is supplemented with a volume of reproductions from the copy formerly belonging to the late William Crawford III and now in the University of Washington in Seattle.  This score is not mentioned by Laurel Fay in her article about early versions of the opera.

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is a standard repertory work of twentieth-century opera and is regularly performed worldwide (it occupies a prominent position in the current exhibition Opera: Power and Politics at the Victoria and Albert Museum). It was also a turning point in Shostakovich's own career both as a composer and as an Artist of the Soviet Union.  Composed in 1930-1932, and staged in 1934, this was the opera denounced in Pravda on Stalin's orders, after its production at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1936.  This catastrophic rebuke cast the composer into despair and peril and he initially composed nothing more, although rehabilitation came the following year with the Fifth Symphony ("A Soviet artist's practical creative reply to justified criticism").  Until Stalin's intervention, the opera had been very successful with many productions following the almost simultaneous pr🦋emieres in Leningrad and Moscow: at the Malïy Opera House on the 22 January 1934 and the Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre two days later.  

There are differences between this score and the first regular edition, published by Muzgiz in 1935, although it is closer to that than the so-called "Urfassung 1932" published by Sikorski in 1979; for example, Katarina has the 1935 words for her great lament in Scene 3 (Act 1, Fig.140).  However the ensuing rape scene with Sergei (Fig. 188ff.) is longer than in 1935: 113 bars, including what Fay terms the "post-tumescent trombone glissandi" [before Figure 191], but not Sergei's 14-bar taunting recitative at Figures 193-194.  During the years 1956-1963, after Stalin's death, Shostakovich revised his score completely as Katerina Izmaylova op.114, although it is Lady Macbeth that it is more often staged.

It seems likely that this vocal score was privately printed for circulation within the Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre, where the 1934 Moscow premiere was given, with a very small print-run, accounting for the few surviving copies, at least in the West. Unusually, the indices to each act list the page numbers where each character appears, perhaps indicating its use for rehearsals.  According to the note𝔉 printed at the bottom of the title, the score was produced by "steklografia", a simple process akin to lithography, where a chemically-sensitive primer is applied to a glass plate ("steklo"), upon which the design is impressed with 🀅special inks. The technique is basic, but its potential as a means of publication was very limited, both in terms of quality and quantity, and it was soon replaced by "Rotator" and "Rotaprint". It seems most unlikely that this score was intended for general circulation.