Despite the Catholic tone of both Shakespeare’s play and Verdi’s opera, the setting is a ruined Presbyterian church. Instead, McVicar has set the action in the nineteenth century, when the operatic version was created. Gone are the castles and cloaks of the Middle Ages. McVicar has no qualms, for example, about adding supernumerary roles, such as King Duncan and three demon-like children. Replete with witches, murder, and madness, Macbeth offers plenty of fodder for the imaginative director. ![]() Both tend to gravitate towards dark and dangerous material - and Macbeth is no exception. Both are well-known to Lyric audiences, McVicar most recently directing Strauss’s Elektra (2018/19) and MacFarlane designing the set of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades (2019/20). ![]() Since it can be jarring to hear Shakespeare’s Macbeth - frequently referred to as “the Scottish play” - adapted, composed and conducted by Italians, Lyric’s production team includes two Scots: director Sir David McVicar and set designer John MacFarlane. Although Verdi’s revised version of his own 1847 original is less commonly performed, it is baffling to this reviewer why the ballet segments weren’t performed, since that was kind of the whole point of the Paris version. His conducting of the opera’s 1865 Paris version was spirited and sensitive. Yet, despite the reduction in seating due to the replacement of the older, cramped seats with newer, larger, more comfortable ones, empty seats remained.Ĭonductor Enrique Mazzola was finally able to stand behind the podium as Lyric’s new music director, succeeding Sir Andrew Davies. ![]() Mandatory masking did not fail to dampen the opening night audience’s enthusiasm and exhilaration. But almost any opera would have been delightful after a pandemic hiatus of eighteen months. The first performance I reviewed of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth was simply terrible, so it was a delight to hear this new production at Lyric. ENGLISH PLAY, ITALIAN OPERA, SCOTS-AMERICAN PRODUCTION
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