About the work
Drama in five acts by Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky, first performed on 16 November 1859 at the Maly Theatre in Moscow and written the same year; it appeared in print in 1860. Alongside "The Forest," it is among the playwright's best-known works and portrays the oppressive morals of a merchant family on the Volga.
Plot
In the fictional provincial town of Kalinov, Katerina lives in an unhappy marriage under the thumb of her despotic mother-in-law, Kabanikha. While her husband is away, she begins a secret affair with Boris, nephew of the tyrannical merchant Dikoy. When the affair comes to light and Boris is sent away to Siberia by his uncle, Katerina sees no way out and drowns herself in the Volga.
Cultural significance
Nineteenth-century critics, above all Nikolai Dobrolyubov in his essay "A Ray of Light in the Kingdom of Darkness," read Katerina's suicide as a revolt against the suffocating constraints of the Russian merchant world, turning the play into a key text of Russian social criticism. Leoš Janáček set the material as the opera "Káťa Kabanová" in 1921, based on Vincenc Červinka's Czech translation, and Tchaikovsky had already composed a concert overture to the drama in 1864.