Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
Lady Macbeth has also become famous in her own right. In his 1865 novel "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", Nikolai Leskov updated "The Tragedy of Macbeth" so that it takes place among the Imperial Russian merchant class. In an ironic twist, however, Leskov reverses the gender roles – the woman is the murderer and the man is the instigator. Leskov's novel was the basis for Dmitri Shostakovich's 1936 opera of the same name.