Giuseppe Verdi: Macbeth

An imposing castle nestled in stunning countryside is a handy prop when staging Verdi’s Macbeth. Lismore Castle fits the bill.

Home to Waterford’s Blackwater Valley Opera Festival since 2010, the castle dates back to the 12th century Norman invasions. Its walls have hosted kings and survived wars. Shakespeare and Verdi would likely have approved of this majestic location for the centrepiece of BVOF’s summer programme.

Paths wind through the castle’s walled, meadow-like gardens. Festooned with a riot of flowers, they provide an enchanting gateway to the castle proper. One could probably find all the natural ingredients, body parts excepted, for the witches’ famous bubbling cauldron right here.

Cedar, yew and apple trees, magnolia, rhododendrons, buttercups, foxglove, daisies, lilies, bluebells and cow parsley, dappled in sunlight, form a blissful tapestry. And here and there, witches lurk—a fittingly macabre touch.

The stage is the courtyard of the castle stables. An audience of around 500 sits under a large canopy. The intimate, outdoor setting is something of a double-edged sword. On the plus side, the music does not have far to travel. The orchestra, (led by Killian Farrell) sounds greater than its chamber size. The leads, baritone Leonardo Galeazzi (Macbeth) and soprano Serenad Burcu Uyar (Lady Macbeth) project to the back rows with ease.

However, the two-floor stable and the small stage area inhibit significant set changes. Wood, banqueting hall, inner chamber, castle park, witches cave, barren borderland… all look much the same, bar the odd atmospheric change in lighting.

At times the staging, and some of the choreography, lacks gravitas. The murder of Banquo fails to chill, while the grappling of his son with one of the murderers, and the youngster’s escape from the feeble grip of the same sicario, has school-play written all over it. Nor do the apparitions that haunt Macbeth entirely convince. The occasional chatter of festival door-staff bleeding into the auditorium is an unwelcome distraction.

A degree of suspension of belief goes hand-in-hand with most opera, but suggestive metaphor and symbolism are no substitute for more convincing detail.

Still, this version of Macbeth scores heavily in the department where it matters most—the musical performances, which are strong across the board. Uyar is perhaps not as convincing in the role of evil schemer as she is later on as a woman whose mind is unravelling, but her vibrato-charged arias throughout are compelling. Pick of the bunch are her soaring incantations to cold-blooded deeds in Act 1, and her embrace of the powers of darkness in Act 2.

Galeazzi also impresses with an impassioned performance that captures Macbeth’s emotional turbulence, his crushing torment and fear.

There are fine turns too from bass Goran Jurić as Banquo and tenor John Porter as Macduff. It is the chorus pieces, however, that really stir the blood. Kudos to Director Sarah Baxter and set/costume designer Francis O’Connor for their unforgettable witches. A coven of fourteen otherworldly goths, they prowl around the stage as nimbly as feral cats, releasing flashes of fire from their hands and conveying properly dark menace.

The 30-minute interval invites a stroll through the castle grounds. An owl speeds silently through the gloaming. A full moon hangs against the night sky to complete the scene—a perfect intro to the witches’ evil brewing at the beginning of Act 3.

The opera’s second half, the “hour of death and vengeance” flies by. Birnam Wood’s march to Dunsinane is, inevitably, underwhelming, but the sight of huddled refugee staggering from war between neighbouring countries–“one great tomb”—strikes a poignant chord in an unprecedented time in Irish history where so many hotels in cities and towns, right across the island, are full of refugees fleeing various global catastrophes, from Ukraine and Afghanistan to Syria and Eritrea.

Perhaps more blood and spilled guts is required of a 21st-century reading of Verdi’s Macbeth to truly shock in an age of smart-phone violence as entertainment. Musically and emotionally, however, BVOF’s Macbeth hits many more right notes than wrong.

Giuseppe Verde
Conductor Killian Farrell
Director Sarah Baxter