Verdi: In His Own Write

By Michael Walsh

Posthumous but prescient comments on the Met's new Macbeth

Giuseppe Verdi did not have to meet the press much; he made his comments about opera in his letters, not interviews. Some of those observations are still valid today, and if Verdi were alive, he wouldn 't have to change a word:

Interviewer: Maestro, the Metropolitan Opera has unveiled Sir Peter Hall's new production of your opera Macbeth, starring Baritone Sherrill Milnes and Soprano Renata Scotto. When the revised version of Macbeth flopped in Paris in 1865, you were criticized for your treatment of Shakespeare. What attracted you to the play?

Verdi: This tragedy is one of the greatest human creations! Some find that I did not know Shakespeare when I wrote Macbeth. In this they are wrong. I may not have rendered Macbeth well, but that I do not know, that I do not understand and do not feel Shakespeare: no, by God, no.

Interviewer: Of course, you went on to write the masterpieces of Otello and Falstaff, so your Shakespearean credentials are well in order. And Sir Peter, director of Britain's National Theater, obviously knows the Bard. His staging is almost cinematic in spots, using dissolves from one scene to another and staging a climactic final battle in stop action. What advice did you give him?

Verdi: If we cannot make something great from it, let us try at least to make something out of the ordinary. I beg you, do not neglect this Macbeth. I need an excellent chorus. Pay attention also to the stage machinery. I am sure that you will mount all the rest with that splendor that so distinguishes you and that you will pay no heed to economy.

Interviewer: In creating a production that might have been seen in your day, Hall seems to be emphasizing that this is your Macbeth, not Shakespeare's. Doesn't this violate your expressed wish to "serve the poet better than the composer'?

Verdi: Mind the words and the subject, that's all I ask. The music will take care of itself.

Interviewer: You feel that the three principal characters in the opera are Macbeth, Lady Macbeth--to whom you charmingly refer simply as "Lady"--and the witches. The women of the Met chorus dig into their demonic roles impressively. And Mimes, after taking four months off from opera last season to recover from a throat ailment, is singing more robustly than ever. But what about Madame Scotto as your Lady?

Verdi: I would like Lady Macbeth ugly and bad; I would like Lady not to sing; I would like a harsh, stifled, grim voice. I would like Lady's voice to be diabolical.

Interviewer: Scotto's certainly is all of that, but in her big sleepwalking scene, she sings with a touching mixture of fury, pathos and resignation. And few divas can command a stage as floridly as Scotto still can. But one controversial production touch is having the dancer who mimes Hecate appear nearly nude during the phantasmagorical ballet of Act III.

Verdi: The apparition of Hecate works well, because it interrupts all those diabolical dances and makes room for a calm and severe adagio. I needn't tell you that Hecate should never dance, but only strike poses.

Interviewer: But naked poses?

Verdi: (No comment).

Interviewer: Although Macbeth was a success when first performed in 1847 in Florence, you were upset by its failure in Paris, where it closed after only 14 performances. So you must be pleased with the Met's extravagant production, led passionately by Conductor James Levine.

Verdi: I see the papers are already beginning to speak of this Macbeth.

Interviewer: Perhaps we'll even begin to consider Macbeth a masterpiece.

Verdi: For the love of God, don't overdo it. It's perfectly futile. --By Michael Walsh

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