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.