Though traditionally regarded as conspicuously cruder than Verdi’s two mature Shakespeare operas, which benefit from Boito’s presence as librettist, Macbeth has had a good track record in Scotland - and not merely because of its Scottish setting.
A famous old Glyndebourne production, with Margherita Grandi as Lady Macbeth, opened the inaugural Edinburgh Festival in 1947, marking the start of those halcyon years when Glyndebourne was responsible for all opera at the Festival. David Pountney’s Scottish Opera production in the 1970s was memorable for its gleeful witches, for its buckets of biliously green blood, and for Galina Vishnevskaya’s poshly Chekhovian Lady Macbeth, as well as David Ward’s big, noble Banquo.
A later Scottish Opera production, just before the turn of the century, gave the company the opportunity to work at the Festival with Luc Bondy, one of the greatest European directors of the day, whose production, with Katherine Broderick’s Lady Macbeth, was ensemble drama at its best. Though it reputedly cost a fortune, it was worth the millions of bawbees that had to be spent on it.
If Verdi’s Macbeth has a flaw, it lies not so much in its supposed crudity, which does it very little damage, as in the fact that Lady Macbeth is almost invariably the star of the show. And in a Deutsche Grammophon DVD I received as a Christmas present, she is played by Anna Netrebko, a portrayal that is as good as they come.
To the New York Metropolitan, the source of this performance, she has in recent years brought a new allure. In Il Trovatore, recently screened publicly in the Met’s international series, she was even said to have surpassed her surpassing portrayal of Leonora for Daniel Barenboim in Berlin - also available on DVD and not to be missed.
As a glossily blonde and glamorous Lady Macbeth she looks voluptuous rather than murderous, and though she is given to standing on top of her bed, as well as to rolling on the floor, she supports such impetuosities with peerless singing and the richest beauty of tone. Even when reading the letter at the start of the opera, she sounds as heart-felt as Violetta in the last act of Traviata, and not at all the stern Lady Macbeth of so many performances.
From start to finish, she rivets attention, and though her smile looks devouring it does not lack passion. She is vivaciously tipsy in the banquet scene and later a predictably enthralling sleepwalker.
But what of the rest of the cast? As Macbeth, Zeljko Lucic gets away with a certain fuzziness of voice and a distinct resemblance to the actor Leo McKern comically wrinkling his nose as a source of emotion. He is presumably meant to look bonkers. Rene Pape, rearing up behind the celebrants at the banquet, is a lacerating and lacerated Banquo.
But it is unquestionably Netrebko’s night and she forms the heart of a production, by Adrian Noble, that updates the action to modern times, with plenty of rifles and revolvers, a gossipy array of witches with handbags, all staged without shirking the work’s historical aspects, despite the volume of bright red blood.
Fabio Luisi’s conducting has leopard-like litheness - listen to how the orchestra sizzles during Lady Macbeth’s entrance scene, and recognise that Verdi’s Macbeth is a masterpiece.
28 January 2016
A famous old Glyndebourne production, with Margherita Grandi as Lady Macbeth, opened the inaugural Edinburgh Festival in 1947, marking the start of those halcyon years when Glyndebourne was responsible for all opera at the Festival. David Pountney’s Scottish Opera production in the 1970s was memorable for its gleeful witches, for its buckets of biliously green blood, and for Galina Vishnevskaya’s poshly Chekhovian Lady Macbeth, as well as David Ward’s big, noble Banquo.
A later Scottish Opera production, just before the turn of the century, gave the company the opportunity to work at the Festival with Luc Bondy, one of the greatest European directors of the day, whose production, with Katherine Broderick’s Lady Macbeth, was ensemble drama at its best. Though it reputedly cost a fortune, it was worth the millions of bawbees that had to be spent on it.
If Verdi’s Macbeth has a flaw, it lies not so much in its supposed crudity, which does it very little damage, as in the fact that Lady Macbeth is almost invariably the star of the show. And in a Deutsche Grammophon DVD I received as a Christmas present, she is played by Anna Netrebko, a portrayal that is as good as they come.
To the New York Metropolitan, the source of this performance, she has in recent years brought a new allure. In Il Trovatore, recently screened publicly in the Met’s international series, she was even said to have surpassed her surpassing portrayal of Leonora for Daniel Barenboim in Berlin - also available on DVD and not to be missed.
As a glossily blonde and glamorous Lady Macbeth she looks voluptuous rather than murderous, and though she is given to standing on top of her bed, as well as to rolling on the floor, she supports such impetuosities with peerless singing and the richest beauty of tone. Even when reading the letter at the start of the opera, she sounds as heart-felt as Violetta in the last act of Traviata, and not at all the stern Lady Macbeth of so many performances.
From start to finish, she rivets attention, and though her smile looks devouring it does not lack passion. She is vivaciously tipsy in the banquet scene and later a predictably enthralling sleepwalker.
But what of the rest of the cast? As Macbeth, Zeljko Lucic gets away with a certain fuzziness of voice and a distinct resemblance to the actor Leo McKern comically wrinkling his nose as a source of emotion. He is presumably meant to look bonkers. Rene Pape, rearing up behind the celebrants at the banquet, is a lacerating and lacerated Banquo.
But it is unquestionably Netrebko’s night and she forms the heart of a production, by Adrian Noble, that updates the action to modern times, with plenty of rifles and revolvers, a gossipy array of witches with handbags, all staged without shirking the work’s historical aspects, despite the volume of bright red blood.
Fabio Luisi’s conducting has leopard-like litheness - listen to how the orchestra sizzles during Lady Macbeth’s entrance scene, and recognise that Verdi’s Macbeth is a masterpiece.
28 January 2016
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