I went into Mac­beth at the St James com­plete­ly cold — I know Verdi’s lat­er operas, includ­ing his lat­er Shake­speare operas; Otel­lo and Fal­staff.  But I’ve some­how missed Mac­beth, and decid­ed to keep it that way, I guess because it’s so excit­ing to go into some­thing com­plete­ly fresh and new, even if it was writ­ten in 1865.

The 1965 Mac­beth was a rewrite of an ear­li­er 1847 opera…  The ’47 ver­sion was well-received and then Ver­di was asked to revise it for Paris a few years lat­er.  That did­n’t hap­pen but it start­ed a bit of a jour­ney for Ver­di, who got deep­er and deep­er until the revi­sion turned into some­thing much big­ger, with new or rewrit­ten arias and cho­rus­es.  He even dropped the final aria from Mac­beth and had him die off­stage, leav­ing the cho­rus tri­umphant to close.

Poor old Ver­di did­n’t see as much suc­cess with this ver­sion as the pre­vi­ous one, but it’s become the pre­ferred ver­sion since the 1960s, and for good rea­son.

The coolest thing about this adap­ta­tion of Mac­beth is that the witch­es are not three, but legion — the whole female cho­rus sing the witch­es and it gives them pow­er and influ­ence.  No longer three weird sis­ters hang­ing out in a moor; they’re an over­whelm­ing force, as they should be.  After all, their machi­na­tions take Mac­beth and his lady down their ambi­tious path, ulti­mate­ly to their mad­ness and doom.  Ver­di said there are only three real char­ac­ters in this opera — Mac­beth, Lady Mac­beth, and the witch­es, and I think he suc­ceed­ed in describ­ing that.

It was strange see­ing Shake­speare’s glo­ri­ous tragedy dis­tilled down to the min­i­mal libret­to of an opera…  so many love­ly words lost…  but those that remain are more than ade­quate to the plot, and the themes are maybe even stronger for it.   And Verdi’s music is, unsur­pris­ing­ly, won­der­ful­ly emo­tion­al.  And DARK.  The inten­si­ty and focus of the action and the music’s ten­sion and colour real­ly real­ly work togeth­er.  Hat tip to Orches­tra Welling­ton, skill­ful­ly con­duct­ed by Brad Cohen.

The pro­duc­tion.….  well.  Netia Jones is a direc­tor, design­er, and film-mak­er, and she did all three for this pro­duc­tion.  The set was very much a blank can­vas for pro­jec­tions, with a slant­i­ng stage rem­i­nis­cent of  ear­ly sur­re­al­ist black and white silent movies.  A translu­cent screen could be dropped or raised from the prosce­ni­um and lit for opac­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, or some­thing in between, as well as pro­vid­ing an extra wall for the pro­ject­ed images.  This allowed for mar­vel­lous flex­i­bil­i­ty, tak­ing the set from a misty noth­ing­ness, to a mar­bled hall, to Bir­nam Wood eas­i­ly.  It also allowed for pro­jec­tion of sub­text or the super­nat­ur­al…  jagged stut­ter­ing clips of a mur­dered Ban­quo, a hys­ter­i­cal Mac­beth…  it was very cool, although I KNOW I missed bits, try­ing to focus on the clips and the action and the sur­titles all at once, and that bugs me…  it’s def­i­nite­ly a chal­lenge to pro­vide that much detail with­out los­ing some of it in the morass.

In the sec­ond half, the slop­ing stage is bisect­ed by a chasm, from whence emerge the witch­es’ appari­tions, as well as shades of Ban­quo’s future descen­dants.  It was an AWESOME effect!  But the rest of the sec­ond half I was wor­ry­ing that some­one was going to fall down the crack.  Lit­er­al­ly.  Luck­i­ly, no opera singers plunged to their doom.

The black and white blank­ness was repeat­ed in cos­tum­ing, until the ban­quet scene when bright splash­es of cyan and bloody red burst out from the mono­chrome…  the direc­tor notes that these are the colours that blend in in 3d to cre­ate white.  Cool idea, and obvi­ous­ly a nod to her filmic back­ground.  The witch­es start in black and white, with iden­ti­cal black wigs in pony­tails…  lat­er they move to all white with red stain­ing the sleeves and hems…  I have to say I pre­ferred the lat­ter — the first cos­tume made them look like they were about to wait­ress an Ital­ian wed­ding in the 80s.  Lady Mac­beth first appeared in the same out­fit, which was an inter­est­ing metaphor to try unpick…  all women are witch­es?  All have pow­er?  She’s just an echo or tool of their influ­ence?  It just was­n’t clear.  I did love her pow­er suit era lat­er on, though…  glam­ourous and strong.  The men did­n’t have a lot of inter­est in their cos­tume…  the drip­ping mer­cury crown was excel­lent, but Mac­beth fac­ing his visions in a track­suit was a lit­tle less inspir­ing.  At least the lit­tle future kings got snazzy red suits.

The cho­rus have so much won­der­ful music to sing, and did so bril­liant­ly, but for the most part they stood around with­out much phys­i­cal direc­tion…  I think this served to high­light the leads, but was it nec­es­sary?  It made for a very sta­t­ic per­for­mance visu­al­ly, despite all the pro­jec­tions and super strong leads.

Oh, the leads…  I LOVE a bari­tone, and Ver­di made a point of writ­ing Mac­beth as a bari.  Phillip Rhodes has a won­der­ful voice, and the skill to use it.  I was delight­ed to see him grac­ing the stage in THE lead role; so often baris are the vil­lains.  His Mac­beth was excel­lent­ly act­ed and sung and I applaud him.  Wade Ker­not’s bass was rich and deli­cious, and he did a won­der­ful job, even after death silenced his beau­ti­ful voice.  Jared Holt and Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono were strong in sup­port and I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing more of Fonoti-Fuimaono in future.

Aman­da Echa­laz as Lady Mac­beth maybe start­ed a lit­tle slow but warmed up soon and her tone, con­trol, and ver­sa­til­i­ty are quite extra­or­di­nary, even at her high­est.  She has a belt on her, too, that blew my mind.…  at the back of the stage, fac­ing away, she achieve more vol­ume and clar­i­ty than some leads will achieve front of stage and singing right at the audi­ence.  She’s a pow­er­house.  Phys­i­cal­ly, too, she’s as dom­i­nant…  sul­try, dom­i­neer­ing and deter­mined, and final­ly, slid­ing into a frag­ile mad­ness that was heart­break­ing to see…  her off­stage sui­cide was entire­ly believ­able after see­ing her fall to pieces in front of us.  Just real­ly real­ly beau­ti­ful­ly per­formed.  What a diva.

It took me a lit­tle time to assem­ble my thoughts on this pro­duc­tion.  There were things that frus­trat­ed me and I had to work through that…  why did a few of the cho­rus just ran­dom­ly run across the stage after Dun­can’s mur­der, when the rest were so sta­t­ic?  Why were peo­ple smok­ing fake cig­a­rettes, and could­n’t they be shown how smok­ing actu­al­ly works?  Why are the St James seats so incred­i­bly uncom­fort­able?  What did I miss in the pro­jec­tions when I was watch­ing the action?  Was there any point to hav­ing every­one put on 3d glass­es only to take them back off again?  It seemed just unnec­es­sary.  And hon­est­ly, the pony­tail wigs were quite dread­ful.

But these are tiny nig­gles, and ulti­mate­ly this was a dynam­ic and excel­lent­ly per­formed pro­duc­tion, with tremen­dous­ly tal­ent­ed per­form­ers doing jus­tice to a won­der­ful opera.  There is a final per­for­mance in Welling­ton tomor­row, and if you haven’t made it yet, I urge you to go.  For those peo­ple in Ōtau­tahi Christchurch, there are per­for­mances on Octo­ber 20 and 22 at the Isaac.  Do it.