Macbeth

Giuseppe Verdi was captivated by Shakespeare throughout his life. Even early in his career, he recognised that the English playwright’s tragic universes were ideally suited to his own increasingly dramatic musical language.

Drama abounds in Macbeth, composed relatively early in Verdi’s career and marking his first full encounter with Shakespeare’s opulent poetic world. Here, power is not bestowed – it is seized. Yet power comes at a cost. Macbeth learns this after murdering King Duncan, as he is consumed by guilt and haunted by a darkening conscience. To his wife, Lady Macbeth, such weakness is intolerable. Driven by ruthless ambition, she is prepared to destroy everything – and everyone – in pursuit of the crown.

In Macbeth, Verdi fuses Shakespeare’s shadowed tragedy with music of searing intensity and brooding atmosphere. Nowhere is this more striking than in the portrayal of Lady Macbeth, who in the opera’s final moments becomes the embodiment of catastrophe itself, descending into madness as she desperately attempts to wash the imagined blood from her hands.

In Australian director Benedict Andrews’ 2013 production, the symbiotic and destructive dynamic between the Macbeths forms the axis of a stark staging that lays bare the work’s brutality. Set designer Ashley Martin-Davis creates a world at once seductive and savage, stripping the characters to their core, while Victoria Behr’s costumes draw them ever deeper into the nightmare.

This season, Jens Søndergaard of the Royal Danish Opera’s soloist ensemble celebrates his 25th stage anniversary with his role debut as the tormented Macbeth. Opposite him, soprano Marigona Qerkezi – who last season delivered a gripping and dramatic Tosca – returns as Lady Macbeth.

Macbeth is performed in Italian with Danish and English surtitles.

Recommended from 13 years old