Verdi, Macbetto, Boston Lyric Opera, by Charles Warren
Verdi, Macbetto
Boston Lyric Opera
November 4, 2011
Conductor - David Angus
Stage Director - David Schweizer
Original Production - Leon Major
Set Designer - John Conklin
Costume Designer - Nancy Leary
Lighting Designer - Robert Wierzel
Movement Director - Ken Roht*
Fight Director - Rob Najarian
Projected English Titles - John Conklin
Wigs And Makeup
Designer - Jason Allen
Cast
Macbeth, Baritone - Daniel Sutin*
Lady Macbeth, Soprano - Carter Scott*
Banquo, Bass - Darren K. Stokes
Macduff, Tenor - Richard Crawley
Malcolm, Tenor - John Irvin*
Lady-In-Waiting, Soprano - Michelle Trainor*
A Doctor, Bass - David Cushing
A Servant, An Assassin,
A Herald, First Apparition - James Demler*
Second Apparition (A Bloody Child) - Molly Paige
Crookedacre/Third Apparition (A Crowned Child) - Marie Mccarville*
Shakespeare was a great inspiration to Verdi, as he was to Berlioz and to many other nineteenth-century composers, writers, and artists of all kinds. Opera Boston recently presented Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict, adapted from Much Ado About Nothing; and before this late work Berlioz had, of course, written his great “dramatic symphony” Roméo et Juliette and an early King Lear Overture. Verdi wrote Macbetto in 1847 (and revised and added to it later), his tenth opera, and just on the cusp of his great middle period that would include Rigoletto andLa Traviata. He concluded his career decades later with the magnificent Otello and Falstaff, works that rival in greatness their Shakespeare sources. Maybe Falstaff more than rivals The Merry Wives of Windsor. As for Otello, ages ago I was at a splendid Metropolitan Opera production—Levine, Vickers—and on the way out encountered a well known Renaissance literature scholar from Princeton—“I think it’s greater than the play!” he gasped.)

