Living at the Opera

Often the Russians are able to delve deeper into an opera score and find a different slant to the composer’s intent which other companies do not always perceive. Thus it was when Artistic Director and Conductor Valery Gergiev, and Stage Director David McVicar, brought the Kirov Opera’s new production of Verdi’s Macbeth to the Kennedy Center. Some producers do not see the moments of intimate dialogue depicting the covert plottings between Macbeth and his Lady as a force equal to the musically-charged finale of Act One. There we find the court, hor­rified on learning of King Duncan’s murder, raising its voice in a tremendous fff and then dropping to a reflective ppp in which Verdi combines the court’s anxiety about who the new king will be with the most imploring plea to Heaven for mercy ever to be found in any of his operas.

As powerfully as this finale strikes us, it is the preceding duet be­tween Macbeth and his Lady which permeates their dank and musty quarters. The duet comes right after Macbeth imagines seeing the dag­ger which will lead him to murder King Duncan and then, after the deed is done, return quickly to rejoin his wife. Here, Verdi and his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, combine poetics with uneasy musical undercur­rents following Verdi’s implicit stage directions that the duet “… must be projected in a hushed and dark voice, except for some outbursts clearly marked “with full voice.” The Kirov’s production clearly shows up the difference between its vocally hushed approach and the mixed loud and soft dynamics that many other productions are prone to take even when the score is not marked in that way. The Russians, in their unwavering respect for Verdi, take him at his word and do not compromise his intentions. The duet, couched in secretive, hushed tones, sweeps the audience along, making it privy to the couple’s dia­bolical plotting. As we listen to their revelations, we are jolted to dis­cover that this is the first time the ill-fated duo is voicing their evil in­tentions and, along with them, we experience an unsettling sensation: no matter how often we may have heard this duet in the past, we grasp anew how singular an opportunity this is to eavesdrop on their plotting. Our surprise is now complicit with their machinations: the Macbeths have made us partners in their crime.

In the Banquet Hall scene in Act Two, Gergiev and McVicar again drop the Macbeths’ furtive, desperate asides right in the midst of Verdi’s jagged and slightly helter-skelter music, clearly indicating that no one at this frenzied party is having a good time. If ever there was an operatic scene where trepidation and confusion are in contrast with a last-minute attempt to save one’s skin, this is it. The scene opens with Lady Mac­beth’s brash but effective drinking song urged on by her husband who soon learns that Banquo has been murdered but that his son Fleance has escaped - a first dent in Macbeth’s fabricated armor. Returning to the festivities, Macbeth imagines seeing Banquo’s ghost, but soundly re­jects the hallucination. Nevertheless, this leads his Lady and their guests to question his judgment. As he recovers his presence of mind, he again urges his wife to lift her cup in song, but Banquo’s ghost quick­ly appears once more, which causes Macbeth to lose control of his al­ready fragile mental balance, Lady Macbeth to lose her composure and, in a stirring finale, their courtiers to recognize they are losing their king.

It is during the moments before the finale, when Macbeth and his Lady are trying to assess the damage done to Macbeth’s throne by his hallucinations, that Gergiev and McVicar project some of the most poignant and heartfelt measures Verdi ever composed to meet the inten­sity expressed at the scene’s end. It takes just two segments, one visual and one vocal, for the Gergiev-McVicar team to bring to the fore the all-­consuming fear that everything the diabolical couple has strived for is lost. As Banquo’s ghost walks across the stage from left to right, pass­ing in front of Macbeth on its way, the weakened, dispirited king crum­ples to the floor, his big frame transformed into a fetal position, his pow­er disintegrating before our eyes. As he slowly comes out of his delirium, he touchingly expresses to Lady Macbeth that he feels his mental and physical powers returning, but she finishes his musical phrase by shaming him and unknowingly predicting his doom.

By emphasizing these moments of extreme self-doubt implied by keeping the Macbeths separate from their soon-to-be-conspirators, Gergiev and McVicar dramatically link these charged emotional scenes to one of the opera’s defining moments - Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene. In most other productions this scene, directed as a separate enti­ty, stands apart from the more robust and clamoring sections. It is rec­ognized as an important element in the story, but somehow the emo­tional continuity is broken, and the scene appears as something detached and then reinstated only as a great operatic moment. Howev­er, this scene is more than that. Due to Gergiev and McVicar’s inherent integrity in following Verdi’s and Piave’s intentions, we are finally able to garner our reward and truly experience the emotional continuity in­tended. We see Macbeth becoming truly unhinged, this being under­lined by his wife’s pathetic commiseration. As she tries desperately to hold on to their fragile mental stability, Lady Macbeth imagines she is taking her husband’s hand and quietly leading him to bed, in recogni­tion that what is done cannot be undone. By taking Verdi at his word, Gergiev and McVicar give his words their fullest meaning, treating this couple with a compassion many other productions do not deem that they deserve.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2006 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Italian opera. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.