Less than bewitching: 'Macbeth' at Lyric Opera

Something wicked this way comes: a new production of “Macbeth” to open Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2021–22 season. Verdi’s opera based on Shakespeare’s tragedy is well-cast, features a splendid first outing in the pit by Enrique Mazzola in his role as Lyric’s third music director, and underlines once again the strength and talent of Lyric’s orchestra and chorus.

Friday’s opening night was a musical triumph as Sondra Radvanovsky, the internationally acclaimed Verdi soprano who was born in Berwyn, leads the cast in the searingly sung story of murder and revenge.

Radvanovsky as Lady Macbeth deploys her darkly colored soprano with fabulous nuance as she moves from motivator-in-chief to head-of-the-cover-up to a soul lost to bloody guilt. She exudes power and confidence as she tosses off perfectly deployed high notes and complicated passages as if they were bullets aimed at the heart of her enemies. She remains cold and calculating as her husband’s guilt begins to incapacitate him for all to see. And in her final scene, as her own guilt won’t let her forget the blood on her hands, her singing evokes both terror and pity from the audience. Radvanovsky is a force of nature.

Bass-baritone Craig Colclough makes his Lyric debut as Macbeth. He offers a rough-hewn portrayal, full of both bluster and confusion. He lacks the vocal power and detail of Radvanovsky but he is a strong actor and his vocal style is given over to creating a clear picture of a disintegrating soul.

Tenor Joshua Guerrero is marvelous as Macduff, conjuring up his own vocal magic in his pivotal late aria, which was rightly adored by the audience.

Ryan Center alum Christian Van Horn is a marvelous Banquo. His bass-baritone sound is commanding and he is superb at creating a sepulchral atmosphere as his doubts about Macbeth gather and take form.

Enrique Mazzola, as his predecessor Sir Andrew Davis used to do, approached the conductor’s podium with buoyancy and a winning smile. He leads the orchestra in a stirring performance, with the music always propelling the story forward. The sound was rich and full but always sensitive to the singers.

The Lyric Opera Chorus, prepared by Michael Black, is superb. They have heft and balance and consistently enhance the drama.

The staging created by director Sir David McVicar (with set design by John Macfarlane) is idiosyncratic. The action takes place in early Victorian Scotland in a Presbyterian chapel, tossing away Shakespeare’s castle, his barren heath, his wild and scary witches’ lair. Instead, the singers are trapped in dull pews with no stage props and nowhere to go. Further, according to program notes by Graham Meyer, McVicar believes that “the Macbeths’ lust for power stems from their lack of children.”

This leads to McVicar inserting three silent characters into the opera who appear to serve as Macbeth’s hallucinations. It’s an interesting idea, and there’s no reason that we shouldn’t actually see the “fatal vision” of the dagger in front of the title character. But we should be horrified. Instead, the audience is left wondering why it is presented to Macbeth by a trio of children who resemble Pugsley and Wednesday Addams plus a pal out having a look-round. It’s awkwardly funny, but not at all chilling. It was telling on opening night that for the first 20 minutes or so of the opera there were occasional small bursts of tittering laughter from the audience, as they grappled to understand what was going on.

Adding to the confusion is the lighting by David Finn. For most of the opera it is various degrees of dreary, dim, dark, or dungeon-black. The costumes by Moritz Junge are almost entirely black or gray. This means that it is often impossible to actually see what is transpiring on stage. When we do, it is difficult to interpret. Why do the witches sit in the pews touching themselves in what looks like a comedy rendition of “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes”? Why are Pugsley and crew repeatedly stabbing a doll? (And why is the trio of kids given a curtain call but not the satisfaction of their names in the program? Perhaps that is a sly way of acknowledging that they are hallucinations.)

There is a big difference between cackling and horrifying versus giggling and baffling. We should see claustrophobic mania but instead are confronted with a puzzling private code.

One of the many famous lines of Macbeth is “Glamis has murdered sleep”, that is, that Macbeth’s actions (as the Thane of Glamis) will not benefit him but haunt him. It seems McVicar has murdered illumination. Not only has he killed the (literal) light, he has undermined his own vision of the story with the particular and peculiar instantiations of his interpretation, leaving the audience perplexed rather than illuminated. He did not allow “heaven (to) peep through the blanket of the dark” and we are left befuddled and frustrated.

In the end, it seems that McVicar has created a glorious production for radio.

Even so, the singing is memorable and satisfying. It was a joy to return to a live performance.

Lyric did a solid job in getting patrons into the building, with friendly and helpful staff out on the street examining proof of COVID vaccination before letting each audience member in. (This resulted in lines, but they moved along relatively quickly.) Inside, the new seats throughout the house looked beautiful and the new aisles, some with lovely, gentle curves, are splendidly done. There were far fewer bars on the main floor than before the pandemic, resulting in lines that moved very slowly, and made worse by the fact that the credit card equipment failed.

Yet none of this seemed to dull the excitement of being back in Lyric’s gorgeous opera house once again.