Macbeth is Verdi’s brilliant 10th opera & was created when the Pergola Theatre in Florence asked him for a scary, spooky, supernatural experience, in 1847. He based it on William Shakespeare’s paranormal play about ambition and treachery from 1606, which was designed to curry favour with the newly-arrived Scottish King James I, a man who had written a treatise on witchcraft, and had just survived a failed assassination attempt with “the gunpowder plot”. In play or opera, can we ever feel pity for this superstitious, traitorous social-climber? A great stage-actor, or singing-actor, can make us do so.
The Verdi Baritone
Sun Jan 3, Sun Jan 10, Sun Jan 17,
Sun Jan 31, Sun Feb 7