Verdi : Macbeth
Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, New York
Fabio Luisi
This Adrian Noble production of Macbeth was, as I recall, the very first Met HD broadcast I saw once they became available in the UK. I wasn't hugely impressed with it at the time, and my opinion hasn't changed a great deal since. Furthermore, in the current political climate, the Met might consider changing the colour of the banners in the last act; it would be an inexpensive and easy alteration to make, because I had a reaction to them tonight, and I wasn't the only one. That aside, there are numerous inconsistencies in the staging that are simply irritating, such as everyone waving guns around, yet in the end always resorting to blades. Then there was Anna Netrebko, made up to look sort of like Kim Basinger in L.A. Confidential, blond wig and all. She's still lovely, but she doesn't need blond hair to pull off the Hollywood femme fatale look, and she's better as a brunette.
Fortunately, on the musical side, the Met had pulled out all the stops with some real superstar casting. Netrebko, as mentioned, more on whom in a bit, Zeljko Lucic (apologies, I still can't manage the diacritics for non-Roman languages), who was already the Macbeth first time around, Joseph Calleja as Macduff and René Pape as Banquo. These last two have all-too brief roles, relatively speaking, but each with particularly fine arias, which were rendered magnificently, as well as one could ever wish to hear them. Pape's Banquo was a skilful blend of apprehension and bravery, his bass voice secure and sonorous, while Calleja delivered an exemplary lesson in pathos without ever crossing the line into bleating sentiment.
Lucic was, relatively speaking, the weak link, but it was strictly relative. I felt that under pressure, his timbre lost colour, flattening and 'whitening' out disagreeably, and he's a little young yet for that to be acceptable. Otherwise the voice is rich and powerful, and he presents a strong Macbeth, though again, the production did him no favours in the Banquet Scene, when he's supposed to react to a ghost we can see clearly enough, but to which he has his back turned, even at the height of the hallucination.
As for Netrebko, I admit that last spring, when the programme and casting were announced for this season, I had my doubts about her potential as Lady Macbeth, but after seeing (and admiring) her Leonora in the Salzburg Trovatore over the summer, those doubts were largely assuaged. Vocally, she is indeed a sumptuous Lady, the vocal range deployed in full, from the final, floated top note of the Sleepwalking Scene to the (intentionally) almost hoarse depths of "La luce langue". Dramatically, too, she committed herself fully to the part, and I'm perhaps being a bit too Anglo-Saxon, not to say too British, when I found that she was maybe overplaying it to some extent. I've had the good fortune to see two outstanding British sopranos in this role; Pauline Tinsley and Josephine Barstow. Vocally, neither of them could hold a candle to Netrebko, but dramatically, there was a level of subtlety, of chilling control quite beyond Netrebko's spitting virago of a Lady, and which rendered the character's ultimate breakdown all the more compelling. As a result, despite some very fine singing, Netrebko never quite gelled with me, I never got a real feel for the character from her.
All told, however, the real stars of the evening were the chorus. Macbeth is a meaty opera for the chorus, there's a great deal for them to do, and they're playing multiple roles throughout the evening; witches, assassins, exiles, courtiers. The Met chorus was on its mettle tonight, really relishing the range and variety of singing required of them, and delivering the goods in full measure. The orchestra, while good, took more of a back-seat than I like to hear, and once again, in my opinion, Fabio Luisi demonstrates that while he's perfectly able to hold a plateau and pit together for a sound performance, he doesn't have that little extra something that can lift the orchestra beyond the merely competent.
[Next : 17th October]
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