Vladislav Sulimsky and Asmik Grigorian grip Salzburg as the murderous Macbeths

What is it that drives the murderous Macbeths? For Shakespeare (and Verdi), it is “vaulting ambition”, but for Krzysztof Warlikowski it is their infertility. In his Salzburg Festival production, while the witches – blind, but all-seeing – prophesy that Macbeth will become king but Banquo will sire future kings, Lady Macbeth undergoes a gynaecological examination, after which she is told that she cannot have children. During a second consultation with the witches, Macbeth is castrated when one of the creepy, wizened children stabs a voodoo doll. 

Witchcraft and science are underscored by Warlikowski ominously screening silent black and white Pasolini film footage at key moments: Oedipus Rex and Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents from The Gospel According to St Matthew. 

The Macbeths sit on the world’s longest bench in the world’s largest waiting room, which still looks small in the vast expanse of the Großes Festspielhaus stage. Małgorzata Szczęśniak’s set sees the witches’ coven slide onto the stage in their own compartment, while giant stadium seating rolls in for the Macbeths’ celebratory banquet. A high walkway provides a glimpse of various comings and goings, and live video footage projects above the stage. It’s a busy show. 

Events move quickly too. Asmik Grigorian’s chain-smoking Lady Macbeth gets many frock changes – all vaguely 1930s style – as the action hurtles along. King Duncan’s guest bed is a hospital gurney, so they’re clearly not anticipating him making it through the night. During the ensemble following the discovery of his bloodied body, his coffin is despatched and the Macbeths are crowned, waving serenely in full coronation regalia and then, once the music stops and the crowd disperses, bursting into laughter at how easily they’ve literally got away with murder. 

At the banquet, Lady Macbeth sings her brindisi as a cabaret act while Vladislav Sulimsky’s Macbeth is haunted by a vision of Banquo, which he’s drawn on a balloon. When the final dish is served, it is a baby doll on the platter, garnished with broccoli. Bon appetit. 

Warlikowski balances the ghoulishness with some really powerful moments. During “Patria oppressa”, sung by the excellent chorus from the sides of the stage, Lady Macduff poisons her children to spare them a bloodier fate at the hands of the Macbeths, their bodies laid across the front of the stage during Macduff’s anguished “Ah! la paterna mano”. 

Philippe Jordan conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in a bracing account of Verdi’s score, highly animated, if occasionally too loud for some of his singers. Tareq Nazmi was wonderfully sonorous as Banquo, his bass rolling effortlessly through “Come dal ciel precipita”. Jonathan Tetelman sang splendidly as Macduff, his tenor ringing effortlessly. 

Sulimsky and Grigorian are both astonishing actors – often captured in close-up camera shots – and they held the show together as the magnetic central pairing. Sulimsky’s baritone lacks a little juice at the top, but his was a tremendously nuanced reading, maintaining the legato line well in his aria “Pietà, rispetto, amore”, defiant in “Mal per me” (restored from the original 1847 version of the opera). 

Verdi harboured fears that his original soprano, Eugenia Tadolini, would sound too perfect in the role of Lady Macbeth. “I would like the Lady to have a harsh, stifled, hollow voice… to be diabolical.” Grigorian fits the bill. Hers is not a classic Verdian soprano, and all the better for it here. It’s not the largest voice either and a stronger trill is required for the brindisi, but there was sinew and steel in her singing. She was especially compelling in the Sleepwalking Scene, clutching a lamp, washing her hands with whisky before slitting her wrists in the sink. 

But her suicide attempt fails and she is united with Macbeth, bound together with the lamp flex, taunting Macduff to pull the trigger on them. But he can’t. When the final notes sound, the Macbeths are still – just about – alive. Warlikowski seems to be questioning whether we can ever rid ourselves of tyrants… or does that breed new tyrants in turn? Youth, in the video form of Banquo’s son wandering a forest as the curtain falls, is our best hope.