Corruption leads to excess. Excess leads to downfall. Phyllida Lloyd’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth, currently revived at Covent Garden, feels like a cautionary tale for our times. When the Thane of Cawdor takes on a second job as assassin, he and his even more dangerous queen celebrate their coronation by dressing head to foot in vulgar gold: the ultimate in bad-taste bling. Such hubris never ends well.
Gold is seen as the ultimate prize here. It glimmers in the darkness of Anthony Ward’s designs. Macbeth and his wife make their proclamations from a gilded cage; Duncan arrives on a golden horse, while later, Macbeth sees a spectacular vision of golden kings riding golden horses – Scotland’s future monarchs, but none of them his own offspring.
Verdi’s 1847 opera (heard in his 1865 revision) is a conundrum. It takes Shakespeare’s outline but uses few of his words, relying instead on a pretty clunky libretto from Francesco Maria Piave. An antihero is at its centre; there’s no love interest in the plot (Macbeth and his wife are much more interested in power than each other) and, Macduff aside, there’s no juicy role for a tenor. Verdi turns the focus instead on Lady Macbeth, giving her the best music, spectacularly sung here by the Italian soprano Anna Pirozzi. She’s every inch the diva, in total command, vocally and dramatically. It’s a tremendous performance.
The strength of her drive is in fine balance with Simon Keenlyside’s superstitious, doubting Macbeth, who morphs into a bloodthirsty tyrant, desperate to kill to stay in power. Keenlyside last sang this role in 2011. His voice has broadened and thickened over time and more vibrato has crept in, but its mahogany quality lingers, particularly when Verdi at last gives him a decent aria, Pietà, rispetto, amore, as he waits to face invading troops.
Those troops arrive in one of the many spectacular set pieces that pepper this production, the vast chorus swarming on to the stage as citizens, soldiers, exiled Scots (Patria oppressa is beautifully done) and, of course, witches. Conductor Daniele Rustioni directs some particularly fine playing from the orchestra’s brass at the chilling opening of Act 3, when their magic potions are brewing.
The witches are not confined to blasted heaths in this production (revived by Daniel Dooner), but turn up everywhere in Macbeth’s court, reflecting Verdi’s view that “they make up a real character and one of the greatest importance”. But my goodness, they do get in the way sometimes, joining the other symbolic irritants of the gilded cage, the bleak snow and an ever-present, large, modern, hoop-shaped tap that can never wash away all that blood.
There’s no clue in Beethoven’s string quartet No 16 in F, Op 135 that it would be his last completed work. Only in the profound, hymn-like third movement is there any sense of a drawing down of blinds. The rest positively sparkles with mischief and daring. This is Beethoven unconscious of his fate, testing the boundaries of classical form, which, when played with the technical assurance of the Brentano String Quartet, feels positively revolutionary.
In last Monday’s lunchtime concert at Wigmore Hall, the US players set about the pared-back writing of the first movement, with its tiny, two-part themes and snatches of pizzicato, as though setting a riddle. That sense of mystery continued in the second movement, where Beethoven plays mind games with quirky, uneven rhythms. The thick, slow-moving texture of the infinitely sad lento was beautifully handled before we were back into the playground of possibilities that is the last movement – all wit and invention, immaculately played.
The Brentanos had opened with another final work: Mendelssohn’s Quartet No 6 in F minor, Op 80 from 1847 (when, incidentally, Verdi was writing Macbeth). Mendelssohn wrote it as a requiem for his beloved sister Fanny, who had died earlier that year. He too was to die before the year was out, aged only 38.
The cry of anguish that is the first violin’s initial entry set the mood of melodic melancholy that continued into the motoric, almost obsessive cross-rhythms that drive the second movement, given a suitably blenched quality here. Yet even in his deepest pain, Mendelssohn could not help but write beautiful music, inserting a delicious cantabile melody into the Adagio, played with exquisite care by the Brentano Quartet. That care continued into the finale, this time keeping a tight rein on the rising despair, but even their disciplined playing could not overcome the anguish of the closing bars. You can hear this concert on Radio 3 tomorrow at 1pm, catch up on BBC Sounds, or watch it streamed on the Wigmore Hall website. Highly recommended.
Star ratings (out of five)
Macbeth ★★★★
Brentano String Quartet ★★★★★
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