Music
Guiseppe Verdi
Conductor
Yakov Kreizberg
Director
Phyllida Lloyd
Designs
Anthony Ward
Lighting
Paule Constable
Choreography
Michael Keegan-Dolan
Fight Director
Terry King
Macbeth
Thomas Hampson
Banquo
John Relyea
Lady Macbeth
Violeta Urmana
Lady-in-waiting
Elizabeth Woollett
Macduff
Joseph Calleja
Malcolm
Andrew Sritheran
Doctor
Robert Gleadow
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Macbeth
by William Shakespeare
Royal Opera House
18 Feb - 9 March 2006
Though we live in such an open and pluralistic world, with ready access to each other's cultures, it is surprisingly difficult for non-Mediterraneans to evoke the spirit of Verdi - and especially his sense of doom and of the power of family and blood relationship - in that overwhelmingly compelling way which seems to be the virtual monopoly of singers and conductors from the region. Verdi is no more rooted in his soil than, say, Wagner and Beethoven are in theirs, and yet, mysteriously, these latter composers can be done far greater justice in the hands of musicians raised in other cultures.
This was glaringly obvious in the performances of Thomas Hampson and Violeta Urmana, respectively in the lead roles of Macbeth and his scheming wife. They are both great singers, he from the US, she from Lithuania; and both, after slightly faltering starts, showed the beauty, line, intelligence and sheer musicality of their singing. Lady Macbeth is a cruelly demanding part with almost no let-up in its dramatic and vocal intensity. In the first Act Urmana was not always in tune and her sound was somewhat wiry and harsh, but then, in Acts 2 and 3, she allowed her voice to reveal its mellow complexity and rich tonalities.
Hampson's singing is extraordinarily lyrical, lusciously full, and perfectly controlled (and therefore ideally suited to Lieder). But conveying death, destruction, power-lust and vengeance at least in the Italian dramatic style doesn't come naturally to it. His apparent attempt to compensate for this by over-singing, by simply turning up the volume, didn't work.
Joseph Calleja was a splendid Macduff, with a compelling stage presence and a magnificently fluid voice, and John Relyea, as Banquo, treated us to unforgettably sweet bel canto. Phillida Lloyd's production cleverly evoked the nightmarish claustrophobia of the Macbeths' world - of a will to power that ploughs on to its own destruction, while being tortured by a conscience unable to forget crimes that cannot be undone. The golden cage in which Macbeth plots and suffers and ultimately dies, in turn contained within an oppressive dark-brown set, was inspired.
Unfortunately the fine artists on stage were not helped by the unvarying tone colours and slightly rigid conducting of Yakov Kreizberg, who failed to elicit the great variety of mood hope, tenderness, defiance, mockery, arrogance, cruelty, agony of conscience, among many others embodied in both score and text. Kreizberg was correct and clean to a fault, despite some moments in which orchestra and choir were not together, but he almost never broke free of his orderly, slightly plodding framework. Nonetheless, his discipline did pay dividends in the fiendishly difficult climax, where Macbeth's own death is prefigured by an orchestral fugue an extraordinarily daring move on Verdi's part, both musically and dramatically. Simon May
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