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Oct. 10th, 2019 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretOh, I forgot to write about Verdi's Macbeth in all the hullabaloo of holidays.
Macbeth composed by Verdi, at the Met
I saw this withroga two weeks ago. It was great. Also, seeing roga again was great. After the show a bunch of subway stations were closed for late night service, because the MTA is a trash fire, so we got a nice walk together down from Lincoln Center to Times Square.
Domingo was supposed to be singing the role of Macbeth, but... yeah, about that. It turns out that if you have a man, with a position of power over other people, there's a pretty good chance that he's been abusing that power for decades to harm the women he holds power over. Huh. Whodathunk. Zeljko Lucic sang the role in his place, and he was really good. He's not as magnetic a performer as Domingo can be, but I'm much less happy seeing art when I know the artists are abusers, so I'm glad for the change. Anna Netrebko was opposite Lucic as Lady Macbeth, and she was fantastic. Though of course Lady Macbeth's arc is the classic one of a woman being punished for wanting things too much, so... yeah. We all live in the patriarchy, what can you do? I mean, besides burn it all down. My friend has an article out the day after the show about why Peter Gelb should be gone at the Met given repeated evidence that his first impulse is to believe the abuser.. I disagree with none of it.
Verdi's Macbeth strips back a lot of the political elements of Shakespeare's play, reducing the character count a bunch and focusing on two things: the Witches, and the Macbeth/Lady Macbeth relationship. Macduff and Malcolm don't appear at all until the last act, Duncan has no lines whatsoever, and signs of the supernatural are everywhere. The witches are occasionally three distinct figures, but are more often three large choral sections, which amplifies the general sense of them as otherworldly.creatures, not quite human. And the Met's production, full of flashy effects and eerie green lights and projected stormclouds, enhances that further. This a story about the collision between the mundane world of politics and the world of faith and mystery. It does not turn out well for the mundanes.
Musically, I don't have much to say. It was Verdi, there was nothing objectionable and plenty enjoyable, but there was also nothing that was particularly memorable. I found the choral writing for the witches more interesting than I found a lot of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's arias, but I liked everything.
Macbeth composed by Verdi, at the Met
I saw this with
roga two weeks ago. It was great. Also, seeing roga again was great. After the show a bunch of subway stations were closed for late night service, because the MTA is a trash fire, so we got a nice walk together down from Lincoln Center to Times Square. Domingo was supposed to be singing the role of Macbeth, but... yeah, about that. It turns out that if you have a man, with a position of power over other people, there's a pretty good chance that he's been abusing that power for decades to harm the women he holds power over. Huh. Whodathunk. Zeljko Lucic sang the role in his place, and he was really good. He's not as magnetic a performer as Domingo can be, but I'm much less happy seeing art when I know the artists are abusers, so I'm glad for the change. Anna Netrebko was opposite Lucic as Lady Macbeth, and she was fantastic. Though of course Lady Macbeth's arc is the classic one of a woman being punished for wanting things too much, so... yeah. We all live in the patriarchy, what can you do? I mean, besides burn it all down. My friend has an article out the day after the show about why Peter Gelb should be gone at the Met given repeated evidence that his first impulse is to believe the abuser.. I disagree with none of it.
Verdi's Macbeth strips back a lot of the political elements of Shakespeare's play, reducing the character count a bunch and focusing on two things: the Witches, and the Macbeth/Lady Macbeth relationship. Macduff and Malcolm don't appear at all until the last act, Duncan has no lines whatsoever, and signs of the supernatural are everywhere. The witches are occasionally three distinct figures, but are more often three large choral sections, which amplifies the general sense of them as otherworldly.creatures, not quite human. And the Met's production, full of flashy effects and eerie green lights and projected stormclouds, enhances that further. This a story about the collision between the mundane world of politics and the world of faith and mystery. It does not turn out well for the mundanes.
Musically, I don't have much to say. It was Verdi, there was nothing objectionable and plenty enjoyable, but there was also nothing that was particularly memorable. I found the choral writing for the witches more interesting than I found a lot of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's arias, but I liked everything.
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Date: 2019-10-11 07:24 am (UTC)That's funny you call it not particularly memorable, as this is the Verdi that gives me the most earworms. I agree there's nothing that stands out for me as wow-inducing, and I don't feel the way about it I do about some of his other stuff, but the funny thing is that when I have a Verdi earworm and go around asking myself "where the heck is this from?" at least 80% of the time it's from Macbeth. :) (To be fair, when it's a Traviata earworm I know where it's from immediately!)