Opera "Macbeth": content, video, interesting facts, history

D. Verdi opera "Macbeth"

Verdi’s tenth opera was a milestone for him and at that time the main one. Unusual for Italian opera plot, baritone in the title role, new principles of singing in individual arias, passions, but not love, as the public used to, but the deepest and most devilish ones in a person - lust for power, revenge, envy, hatred. All this, coupled with beautiful music highlighted "Macbeth"from among the many operas written by the composer in the 1840s.

Summary of the opera Verdi "Macbeth" and a lot of interesting facts about this work, read on our page.

Summary

The action takes place in Scotland and on the Anglo-Scottish border in the middle of the 11th century. Macbeth is King Duncan's favorite, who has a great influence on him. Witches met by returning Macbeth and Banco from battle predict that Macbeth will become the king of Kavdor and the king, the descendants of Banquo will also become kings. Soon the news comes from Duncan that Macbeth was given the title of Kavdorsky for his victory in the battle - the prophecy begins to come true. The thoughts of Macbeth captured the second part of the prediction - about coming to power. He writes about this to Lady Macbeth, who is plotting the murder of the king, which he also inclines to her husband. This plan is carried out as soon as Duncan is left to spend the night in the castle of Macbetov - in the morning Macduff finds his body torn to pieces.

Macbeth becomes the Scottish king, but he is haunted by the words of the witches that Banco’s descendants should ascend to the throne. He and his wife decide to kill Banco along with the heir with the hands of mercenaries. The killers are waiting for their victim in the park, where he appears with his son. Banco dies, and the boy manages to escape. At this time, Macbeth, as the new king of Scotland, is hosting a party for the aristocracy, which is also Banco's ghost. The nobles begin to suspect that the new king received power illegally. Macduff supports them.

Macbeth again appeals to the witches for a prediction. They warn that he should be wary of Macduff, but may not be afraid of anyone who is born a woman, and will also be invulnerable until Birnam Forest approaches the castle. Macbeth ruthlessly cracks down on the Macduff family. Out of grief, he stands under the banner of Malcolm, the son of the murdered King Duncan, who is coming from England to fight the bloody Scottish ruler, covering his troops with tree branches. Lady Macbeth under the yoke of the deed goes crazy and dies. Macduff pursues Macbeth and kills him - so the last prophecy is fulfilled, because he really was not born, but cut from the womb of his mother.

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Interesting Facts

• Verdi all his life creatively watched the various plays of Shakespeare. In the early 40s, he carefully studied the subjects of "Hamlet" and "The Tempest", in the 60s he hatched the idea of ​​"King Lear." In the 50s he even planned to write operas for all the major Shakespearean tragedies. But it turned out that Macbeth was born, and only after many years, at the sunset of a career - "Othello"and"Falstaff"(according to the plays" Henry IV "and" Windsor Mockers ").
• Together with F.M. Piave Verdi created 7 more operas: "Ernani", "Two Foscari", "Stiffelio", "Rigoletto", "Traviata", "Simon Boccanegra", "Power of fate".
• One of the magnificently thought out scenes of the opera is the arrival of King Duncan to Macbetov Castle. It passes in complete silence to the sounds of a leisurely march, which the composer in the score noted as "village music".
• The opera “third main role” after Macbeth and his wife Verdi called the witch parts written for three choirs of 6 female voices - 2 out of each register. Such an ensemble allowed the composer to express the demonic nature of music.
• First Lady Macbeth M. Barbieri-Nini, in addition to "Two Foscari" and "Macbeth", participated in another world premiere of Verdi's opera. In 1848 she sang Gulnara in the Corsare.
• After the Parisian premiere, some of the press attacked Verdi, both for the non-musical plot and for the fact that he did not understand the meaning of the tragedy of Shakespeare. The composer was determined to publicly speak in the same newspapers to substantiate his position. "Perhaps I did not manage to express everything in Macbeth, but it is unfair to say that I don’t understand or feel Shakespeare," he wrote to the French publisher and journalist Leon Escudier. - "I love him very much and constantly re-read, not letting go of the earliest youth."
• On December 7, 1952, La Scala opened the season with Macbeth, where Maria Callas performed the part of Lady Macbeth for the first time. Exactly 45 years later, in this role Milan was conquered by Russian singer Maria Guleghina.

• The opera premiered at a time when the liberation movement was gaining momentum in Italy. The final chorus of the Scottish exiles in Macbeth was often perceived by the public as a manifesto against tyranny, it became the direct successor of the choirs from Nabucco and Lombardi, full of regrets about the lost homeland. In the version of 1865, when the Risorgimento events were coming to an end, the new choir had already turned to human suffering in a broader sense.
• Verdi compared his hard work in the 1840s with the work of a slave in the galleys - during this decade 13 of his operas were written and put up - exactly half of what he wrote in 54 years of his work. Among some fairly mediocre and even unsuccessful works for Verdi there are undoubted achievements, the main ones being "Nabuccoand Macbeth.

Popular arias

"Pieta, rispetto, amore" - Macbeth's aria (listen)

"Vieni t'affretta" - Lady Macbeth's aria (listen)

"Ah, la paterna mano" - Macduff's aria (listen)

History of creation and productions

To create an opera based on Shakespeare’s tragedy was a long-time wish. Verdi, and by 1846, he increasingly thought about Macbeth. The maestro rewrote the plot of the future opera in prose and suggested that Francesco Maria Piave write poems. They were not only familiar with the librettist, but understood each other well, having the experience of creating two joint operas. Piave knew the high demands of the maestro and sometimes rewrote the scenes many times, seeking their consistency with the composer’s plan. In September 1846, Verdi sent a co-author of his version of Macbeth, writing that this tragedy is the greatest man-made. He asks Piave to be concise - verses must express very briefly what is happening to achieve the greatest effect. Verdi also notes that in the speech of the witches, he would like to see strange and original nuances that distinguish them from other heroes.

Verdi entrusted the performance of the title role to one of the best baritones of those years - Felice Varese. The surviving letters show how thoroughly the composer explained to the singer not only the nuances of the music, but also all the psychological movements of the hero, working with him practically as a director.

If Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare is merely a catalyst for her husband’s misconceptions, then Verdi is the direct instigator and equally equal participant. Her brilliantly written part for a dramatic soprano is as important as the title part.

Macbeth opened a new page in the Italian opera - it was they who made the final transition from the Bel canto era to the realism era. The composer made many key arias not vocal, but recitative with orchestral accompaniment - such is Macbeth's monologue before the murder of Duncan, such is the scene of his wife's somnambulism. It is no accident that these two scenes were considered by Verdi to be key in the whole opera. Such a presentation speaks of the author’s intention to focus not on the music as such, but on the credibility of the characters and the exact transfer of the plot.

The premiere took place in the La Pergola theater in Florence on March 14, 1847. The part of Lady Macbeth was performed by Marianna Barbieri-Nini, this was her second work at the Verdi premiere - three years earlier she sang the main female part in “Two Foscari”. After the first performance, despite the warm welcome, the opera was criticized by both specialists and the public - how can it be, not a single decent tenor party and no love affair. At that time, both of these elements in the opera were obligatory. However, Verdi ignored this tradition - he was not interested in a love story, but in the study of the psychology of power.

That is why, before the performance of 1848 in Naples, he rejected the idea of ​​inviting the role of Lady Macbeth to be an outstanding singer E. Tadolini - a beautiful woman with a gorgeous voice. The composer needed an artist who was able not so much to sing as to realize the unpleasant and evil heroine with a deaf, harsh and gloomy timbre. Verdi was looking for the devil, not the angel. That was Barbieri Nini, but not Tadolini.

Almost 20 years later, as the author of Rigoletto, La Traviata, and Troubadour, Verdi will return to his Macbeth. For the premiere in Paris, the maestro completely remakes his early masterpiece - appends, rearranges or deletes scenes (even ballet appears in the opera), changes the final. To finalize the libretto, he attracts Andrea Maffei, a translator and poet, the wife of Countess Clara Maffei, who provided Verdi great support in his difficult years. With Maffei, Verdi has already collaborated, as with a librettist, creating the next Robbers opera after Macbeth. Thus was born the second edition of Macbeth, which was released on April 21, 1865 on the stage of the Lyric Theater.

In Russia "Macbeth" was first heard on December 1, 1854, performed by the St. Petersburg Imperial Italian Opera. Since censorship did not allow performances with scenes of assassinations of monarchs, the opera was edited based on the plot and called "Sivard-Saxon".

Since 2001, Macbeth directed by D. McVicar has been performing at the Mariinsky Theater. In 2017, a performance with an unusual cast of performers took place - Macbeth's baritone sang Tenor Placido Domingo sang, soprano Lady Macbeth sang mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk. In 2003, Eymuntas Nykrosius staged an opera at the Bolshoi Theater, and in the summer of 2018 the premiere of Macbeth staged by Kama Ginkas is expected at the Theater. K.S. Stanislavsky and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko.

"Macbeth" music in the cinema

Music from the opera can be heard in films of different eras. This is the second film by B. Bertolucci "Before the Revolution" (1964), and the 2004 nominee for 3 Cesar Prizes, the film "Partner" (2004), and the horrors of D. Argento "Opera" (1987). But the 1987 Finnish film Macbeth, based on Shakespeare’s tragedy, used Verdi’s music, but not from the opera of the same name, but fromAida".

Stage versions of "Macbeth" have repeatedly been filmed:

• Metropolitan Opera, 2015, production by G. Halvorson, starring J. Lucic, A. Netrebko;
• Covent Garden, 2011, directed by S. Judd, starring S. Kinliside, L. Monastyrska;
• Opera de Paris, 2009, staged by E. Sommer, starring D. Tiliakos, V. Urman;
• "Gran Teatro di Liceu", 2005, directed by T. Bargalho, starring K. Alvarez, M. Guleghina;
• La Scala, 1997, production by K. Battistoni, starring R. Bruzon, M. Guleghina.

It is believed that their main masterpieces Verdi wrote after the 1850s, when he gained maturity and skill. Nevertheless, every day in two theaters of the world one of his early operas sounds, "Macbeth". She was not lost among the masterpieces of the maestro himself, nor in the world operatic heritage, which speaks of her undoubted artistic value and ability to impress the public even almost 2 centuries after its creation.