Macbeth by Verdi, Sat 14 Dec 2024, From (2024/2024), Directed by Martin Kušej, Conductor Andrea Battistoni, Nationaltheater, Munich, Germany

In honeyed tones, Lord and Lady Macbeth reveal their passionate and bizarre emotions to us. But behind this beauty there lurks an abyss, which Verdi unveils with one of the cruelest dramas in the history of world literature. In their struggle to seize power and retain it once it has been usurped, Macbeth and his lady commit one murder after another. The unwavering nature of their desire imbues their love with a radicality that would have been unthinkable on the operatic stage before this work. “The subject matter of this opera is neither political nor religious: it is fantastic,” wrote Verdi and brought Shakespeare’s play closer to a more “romantic” reading. In actual fact, the witches, ghosts and apparitions, the eerie elements, which dominate the musical and dramatic flow, in short the whole world of this opera can be regarded as an outward image of its protagonists’ inner state.