Composer - Dmitri Shostakovich

Company - Birmingham Opera Company

Director - Graham Vick

Conductor - Alpesh Chauhan

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Themba Mvula - The Engineer, The Arresting Office, The Prison Guard

The wife has married for money.

She and her husband are tyrannised by the Father in Law bitter that they have not bred him a grandchild.

When the husband leaves on business the wife takes a lover - a new worker. The Father inLaw finds out and whips the lover to the brink of death. The wife poisons her father in law. Determined to make her new found happiness last she kills the husband, hides the body and marries the lover.

The police, unhappy at not being invited to the wedding crash the party and find the body.

In prison, she finds out exactly who she has married.