“Cawdor, you are a conceited child,” Lady Macbeth hisses, as her husband, having just committed regicide, starts unravelling. In this new production of Verdi’s Macbeth, both halves of the power-hungry couple behave like self-absorbed children, tantalised by the crown. The shiny toy appears during the overture and keeps reappearing to command their attention, a gaudy focal point in the sombre sets.
The plot unfolds under a contemporary military regime. Macbeth and Banquo, sweaty from jungle warfare, stride through lush vegetation that half-conceals the witches, in homespun drab and with tumbleweed hairdos. A military band welcomes King Duncan and the Doctor is an army medic. The ubiquitous uniforms bespeak systemic repression and the witches rifle through stacks of documents that could be secret intelligence files. Duncan is in frail health, suggesting an imminent power vacuum that nourishes Macbeth’s ambition. He and his Lady inhabit empty rooms dominated by a cot and a giant teddy bear, symbols of their childlessness. Lady Macbeth is a psychologically hardened automaton in a sleek wardrobe, preset to prompt her husband into power. Macbeth is feral-eyed as soon as the witches proclaim him future king. By the dagger scene, he is in full hallucinating, hyperventilating mode. Their interaction has a distressing, mechanical dynamic.
Every acting detail of Andrea Breth’s libretto-driven direction serves a purpose. Even singers in smaller roles, such as Laetitia Singleton and Lukas Jakobski as the Lady-in-waiting and the Doctor, give intense performances. The Macbeths pace compulsively in their heavily guarded mansion, whose claustrophobic atmosphere is aggravated by the jungle growth fringing the bay windows. No need for Birnam Wood to “remove to Dunsinane”: it is already there, sealing the usurper’s fate. There are other powerful visuals, such as the banquet table laden with slabs of raw meat, but not all the imagery works. The audience, many of whom lustily booed the production team, seemed particularly irked by the immolation of the teddy bear during the vengeance duet “Ora di morte e di vendetta”.
The highest accolades of the evening go to Marc Albrecht and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, for an idiomatic and engrossing performance that was one stretched bow of dramatic tension. The trilling woodwinds and portentous brass in the opening bars struck on the right nocturnal undertones and inexorable momentum and both were sustained until the last note. The prodding rhythms of the witches’ music had a gleeful lightness, while ensembles such as “Schiudi, inferno”, the collective cry of horror at Duncan’s murder, rose with majestic sweep. Daring to employ both very soft piani and scarped crescendos, Mr Albrecht did not merely present a string of musical contrasts, but an unbroken chain of narrative links. Together with the impeccable Dutch National Opera Chorus, he gave the refugees’ lament “Patria oppressa” a truly tragic dimension, its funebrial pulse as raw as a throbbing wound. And without the players’ splendid musicianship the tenuously textured eeriness in the sleepwalking scene would have been impossible.