MACBETH
Verdi’s most evocative music brings Shakespeare’s drama to life on the stage of the Royal Opera House. MACBETH stars British baritone Simon Keenlyside as the titular tormented ruler of Scotland. Don’t miss this thrilling tale of power and corruption.
Verdi’s lifelong love affair with Shakespeare first took wing with MACBETH in 1847. The composer thought the play ‘one of the greatest creations of man’ and, along with his librettist Piave, set out to make of it, ‘something out of the ordinary’ on the operatic stage. Musically, Verdi’s masterstrokes were the macabre choruses for the witches, the evocative orchestral colours and the increased role for the ‘ugly and evil’ Lady Macbeth. Although Verdi later revised the opera in 1865 for Paris, his earlier, more unified version of the opera is used here for this revival of Phyllida Lloyd’s striking staging. Simon Keenlyside and Martina Serafin play the Scottish nobleman and his villainously ambitious wife, who spurs her husband to murder for the sake of his career, and American bass-baritone Raymond Aceto takes the role of Banquo, murder victim and symbol of conscience.