
★★★
It takes great ambition to take on Giuseppe Verdi’s operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, itself one of the great poetic works about (overweening) ambition. Marie-Éve Signeyrole has set out to find a contemporary visual language to match the power of both Shakespeare and Verdi.
Rather than run the tale of murder and dictatorship through contemporary politics (Putin, Orban, Trump, etc. – there are almost too many candidates to choose from), Signeyrole has set Macbeth in a future where Scotland has declared independence and where artificial intelligence has replaced witches.
This is a new-age Macbeth, a future where pagan symbols and artificial insemination coexist, where swords and guns are mobilised for combat and assassinations. With inventive image-making and stagecraft, Signeyrole tries to move Macbeth out of the hoary Middle Ages into a contemporary parable that seeks to show the ghost in the machines.
Enrique Mazzola directs the Deutsche Oper’s wonderful orchestra with real verve. Roman Burdenko and Felicia Moore, as Lord and Lady Macbeth, sing Verdi’s music powerfully. And yet, Signeyrole’s admirable ambition doesn’t quite come off.
She’s made some bold choices – and, like the tragedy’s child murderers – has no hesitation to pull the trigger. But these choices don’t offer any new ideas about power, politics, or even art. Still, this Macbeth is no crime. It’s simply an always-intriguing, but not always convincing, staging of an opera.
- Deutsche Oper, Bismarckstr. 35, Berlin-Charlottenburg, Jan 11, 19 and 25, Italian with English and German surtitles, details.