By Sara Rossi

MILAN, Dec 7 (Reuters) – La Scala opens its new season on Sunday with Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, an opera promoting women’s rights that was once banned in Russia.

The Milan opera house is staging the work in a tribute to Shostakovich 50 years after his death.

The opera, based on a play by Nikolai Leskov, debuted in St Petersburg in 1934 and was originally intended to be the first of a trilogy dedicated to Russian women.

Despite its initial success, the opera faced criticism from the Soviet leadership, including Joseph Stalin, due to its depiction of sex, violence and female rebellion and it was banned for nearly 30 years in the country.

“Opening the season with this opera is … a tribute to a 20th-century giant and to an o

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