Macbeth at The Metropolitan Opera

 I hope that many of you saw the Met Opera broadcast of Verdi's 1847 opera (revised in 1865), Macbeth, from Shakespeare's violent drama about a sociopath murderer king and his even more evil wife. Lady Macbeth was ever-so-Melania as portrayed by the statuesque Lise Davidsen, and baritone Quinn Kelsey gave a chilling portrait of an assassin torn between cowardice and power-lust. Opera multiplies all emotions, so when Lady Macbeth urges her husband on to murder the old king, a guest in their own home, we see the depth of the lust for power. Later, we see the price, as madness and guilt crush them.

 

Luisa Proske's production was the young director's first outing at the Met, and it provided a rotating set of battlefields, castle interiors, court halls, and other dark wastelands.

The real Macbeth ruled briefly in the 11th century, but this production costumes all in Elizabethan finery and military armor. By displacing time, the director is able to fold in the witch-crazes that roiled over Scotland and England, and she turns the three weird sisters of Shakespeare into a huge coven-chorus of screeching witches, who are seen vampirizing dying soldiers on the battlefield. They slither around the set in most scenes and whether they are a projection of the inherent evil of Macbeth and his wife, or are meant to be supernatural agents and figments of madness -- the audience can take it literally or not as they wish.

 

"Patria oppressa! il dolce nome

No, di madre aver non puoi,

Or che tutta a figli tuoi

Sei conversa in un avel."

 

In the last act, we see a chorus of war survivors, orphans, widows, the wounded, the oppressed, and as they are costumed as the generic poor of Europe, their cries make us instantly think of Ukraine. Was this intentional, or coincidental? No one looked especially Scottish in this scene, and Verdi, swept up the politics of his time, had good cause to make this scene about everyone, everywhere. Conductor Nezet-Saguin opined that this is Verdi's greatest chorus, and it was truly sublime.

 

Further suggestions of the witch-craze come in when the furious crowd decides to add burning at the stake to Macbeth's on-stage death.

 

So many new opera productions commit violence against the story through anachronisms. Here, the liberties all worked, and this was a day to remember at the Met. Bravi!