Festival Opera
Macbeth
Festival Theatre
Keith Bruce
five stars
AFTER a week full of magnificent opera productions on the Usher Hall stage that required minimal resources beyond the musicians and their instruments, it was time for fully-staged opera to mount a spirited fightback. The arrival in town of Gianandrea Noseda and Teatro Regio Torino means director and designers can breath easily again, their jobs are safe.
In some ways this is a spare staging of Verdi's version of The Scottish Play, which was the first opera at the first Edinburgh Festival 70 years ago, but the stage pictures created in black, red, silver and gold from billowing silk, a skeletal war-horse, a construction set of seating and railings, swords, crucifixes, and sumptuous costuming will stay in the mind for a long time. Carmine Maringola's design looks made for dance show, because movement is integral Emma Dante's production, choreographed by Manuela Lo Sicco. Tumbling fawns and rutting satyrs inhabit the dark world of the witches and circus acts decorate the court scenes, when things go a little Versailles. The death of Duncan culminates in a pieta-like tableau, the opening of Act 3 has the weird sisters giving birth into steaming cauldrons, and Macduff's slain family are lain out across the stage like corpses on a battlefield under shrouds – this is not a production shy about the significance of the childlessness of the Macbeths. And when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane it is as Chelsea Flower Show display of flowering cacti.
More than holding its own in the company of this visual feast is the music, with the orchestral colours glorious – and the winds in particular outstanding – and some superb singing. The first night audience heard Dalibor Jenis in the title role and Anna Pirozzi stratospheric as Lady M. Bass Marko Mimica's Banquo and tenor Piero Pretti's Macduff were the pick of the supporting cast. The choral forces and dancers combine throughout in providing the moving mass of humanity that drives the narrative compellingly on. This is a Macbeth not to be missed.
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