A Macbeth that few have ever seen
Opera Macbeth Buxton International Festival
This hugely enjoyable production offers a rare opportunity to hear the original 1847 version of Verdi’s first Shakespearean opera, and it proves immensely rewarding. The changes made 18 years later may have been largely for the better and have certainly become standard in modern performance, but how fascinating it is to be confronted with the composer’s first thoughts on the matter – raw, rough and virile, unsubtle in colouring and emotion, but ablaze with hot-headed energy.
It’s also useful to be reminded just how substantially different the second recension is, in detail as well as in major numbers. Macbeth himself has a massive amount more to sing in the “first” Act 3, the banquet scene springs some surprises, and the “Patria oppressa” chorus isn’t nearly as bleak as it became. On the whole, the mature Verdi altered the opera in the interest of stylistic smoothness, darkening the orchestration and eliminating gratuitous jauntiness – except, oddly, from the Witches, who remained a quasi-comic crew of grotesques when not conjuring up hellish visions.
Perhaps this production wouldn’t have seemed quite so effective had it not been for the exceptionally adroit conducting of Stephen Barlow, who drew crisp, pungent playing from the Northern Chamber Orchestra and encouraged, rather than bullied, his cast. The modest dimensions and friendly acoustic of Buxton’s opera house helped, too – nobody needed to fight to get words across and the drama could be vividly communicated without outsized melodramatic gestures.
Underrated baritone Stephen Gadd made a heroic Macbeth, physically powerful and expressive of inner torment, as well as the master of a firm legato line. Coiffed to suggest a Forties vamp such as Barbara Stanwyck, Kate Ladner coped admirably with the technical challenges that Verdi piles on to Lady M; her Italian is unidiomatic, but she had guts and gusto to burn. Oleg Tsibulko was a mellifluous and dignified Banquo; Jung Soo Yun a rather brutish Macduff. The chorus, which has much to do, was terrific throughout.
Elijah Moshinsky, an old Verdi pro, has devised an intelligent and lucid staging, sensibly framed by Russell Craig’s low-budget designs, that avoids directorial funny business without becoming deathly dull. A creaky matinee audience was roused to considerable enthusiasm – this was opera that exerted an authentic iron grip.