In the article, the film-opera “Katerina Izmailova”, directed by Mikhail Shapiro, is presented as an interpretation of the eponymous opera by Dmitrii Shostakovich (in the second edition). Through the poetics of cinema art, the depth of reading the artistic and philosophical content of the music of the great composer is considered. We consider the relationship between the predominant musical - including the vocal - series with visual ones, including the symbols of the color scale. The specificity of the frame composition and the ways of organizing the chronotope are analyzed. The ways of revealing the complexity of Shоstakovich's dialogical relations with N. Leskov's work “Lady Makbet of Mtsensk” and with the first edition of his opera are characterized through intertextuality - taking into account the achievements of musicology.