Macbeth (Opera)

One of my cultural blind spots is opera. As much as I would like to take an interest in it, it just leaves me cold. I went to an opera once--La Boheme at the Met--and I enjoyed it all right, but it didn't make me want to study opera and devote my life to it.

As I make my way through adaptations of Macbeth, I thought I'd look at the opera Verdi wrote of it. I saw a DVD of a production done in 2007 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris. It was interesting, if not terribly engrossing.

The opera was written in 1847, with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It sticks pretty close to Shakespeare's story, only adding a bit extra for Lady Macbeth (who does seem to disappear from the play). There is also a ballet sequence in the witches' invocation scene, which doesn't make any sense in the narrative but I guess was a common thing in opera.

Opera, it seems to me, is not only about the music, but also about spectacle. Verdi's Macbeth doesn't have music that stays with you, instead I will remember the imagery that director Davide Mancini and his design team created. The stage is bare except for a long ramp with a red carpet. Red and black are the only colors seen, and the costumes in particular are eye-popping. Everyone seems to be wearing outfits made of PVC, as if they were on their way to the S&M club. And I'm not sure if this was a directorial choice, but instead of three witches there are about two dozen; the same for the murderers, who have gone from two to ten times that. The curtain call reveals about a hundred cast members. Opera is supposed to be about excess, methinks.

The performers seemed fine to me, but I wouldn't know. Giuseppe Altomare is Macbeth, and Olga Zhuravel is Lady Macbeth, and while opera stars aren't necessarily great actors, these two displayed some fine emoting.

So I probably won't see another opera for a long, long time. Like poetry and jazz, I just don't dig it. But it didn't kill me.