The play came, the play went.
That was that: an evening spent. (Scott C. Wells)
Macbeth, Grand Théâtre de Genève, June 2012
When I first heard that
Jennifer Larmore was going to sing Lady Macbeth I thought: “Madness!” and “This will be her undoing!” So it was with some trepidation that I went to Geneva for the new Christof Loy production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” at the Grand Théâtre. Lady Macbeth is such an iconic role: every actress wants to play her and every dramatic soprano wants to sing the part. Until now I had not placed Jennifer Larmore in the category “dramatic soprano”… but then I had never expected her to sing Countess Geschwitz or Kostelnicka either – and in both parts she triumphed! So maybe she would do the trick again and put to shame all those who scoffed at her audacity in tackling a dramatic Verdi role.
When I approached the opera house on the afternoon of June 24th I was greeted by deafening noises from a bandstand set up right in front of the theatre and a parade of gaudily dressed singers, dancers and acrobats hopping around the Place Neuve in some kind of horrible witches sabbath! Was this part of the production? The witches ballet from act 3? “Round about the cauldron go / In the poison’d entrails throw!” You never know these days…but, no, this vulgar spectacle was definitely not Loy style! My only worry was would this horrible hullaballoo go on during the whole afternoon and how would this affect the performance inside…? Fortunately the theatre was soundproof and no outside noises interfered with Verdi!
Where Loy’s “Jenufa” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin had been set in a blindingly white box the new “Macbeth” was set in a very dark, gloomy room of a “Gothick” Scottish castle, with a big Tudor style fireplace on the left and a sweeping central staircase in the background (Design: Jonas Dahlberg; Lighting: Bernd Purkrabek) with associations of old black and white horror films of the 1930s or Victorian mystery thrillers. This stage set was the perfect visual translation of Verdi’s darkest and gloomiest score. Loy again had this production tailor-made for Jennifer Larmore who spooks around the stage, as “The Woman in White” already during the overture. For her entrance aria she descends the grand staircase majestically clad in black velvet, and for the banqueting scene she wears a white crinoline right out of “Gone with the Wind” (costumes: Ursula Renzenbrink) – which made me think what a shame it is that there isn’t an opera based on this novel, as Scarlett O’Hara would have been
her role of a lifetime. She certainly looked
every inch a queen. As for her singing I would say she gave a
historically informed performance of the role, firmly planting it in the belcanto tradition in which Verdi was rooted, ornamenting the reprise of the cabaletta “Or tutti sorgete” and also the brindisi. You rarely hear the trills in the drinking song “Si colmi il calice” so clearly chiselled. Also, her high notes were truly ringing throughout, her big asset these days. The problem with this role is that Verdi wanted to leave the old-style belcanto tradition behind with this opera, demanding a new singing style, more dramatic and declamatory, while at the same time he wrote “old-fashioned” arias, cavatine and cabalette that run contrary to his declarations. Maybe in 1847 he didn’t want to completely alienate audiences, so pacified them with “conventional” numbers alongside truly revolutionary ones like the duet after the murder and the sleepwalking scene, the crucial moments around which the whole piece revolves: “These numbers must absolutely not be sung, they must be acted and declaimed with a very muted and veiled voice.” The duet “Tutto è finito [“I have done the deed!”] – Fatal mia donna” was certainly a highlight of the performance, almost more whispered and hissed frantically and panic-fuelled than sung and so totally in keeping with Verdi’s instructions for it to be sung altogether “sotto voce” and “con sordino”. In the sleepwalking scene Verdi broke free from the conventional, Lucia/Puritani/Sonnambula-style mad scene, renouncing all empty virtuosity and meaningless coloratura cascades in favour of a straightforward singing line that mirrors the never-ending nightmare the Lady is now wrapped up in. The sombre and subdued orchestral colours (the haunting cor anglais!) make this scene one of the most spine-chilling and at the same time deeply moving of all opera, and Jennifer Larmore’s interpretation was truly riveting (never mind the now rather extended vibrato that has crept into her singing). We see the Lady slowly sinking to the ground, weighed down, as it were, by the burden of her conscience, and the feared D flat at the end has to be sung or rather breathed by her while lying flat on her back – not the most comfortable singing position to be sure! What the voice perhaps ultimately lacks to make it a true Verdi voice is a certain texture and clout, the “undaunted mettle” that makes this formidable character truly dominant. In the interval I overheard someone say “She is not Birgit Nilsson!” That’s neither here nor there. You could as well say that a cherry is not a strawberry or a cat not a dog! And I doubt Verdi had someone like Nilsson in mind when he wrote the music – simply because voices like this, I am sure, didn’t exist at the time. They were not needed: Tristan und Isolde, Elektra, Turandot had yet to be written! And you cannot impose a much later singing-style on a work from an earlier period (as has, of course, been done for much of the 20th century, and is still going on, despite the “HIP” movement opening up new perspectives on old and supposedly well-known works).
So Larmore once again acquitted herself valiantly against great odds and showed that you don’t have to be a Wagner or Verismo singer to do justice to early Verdi. She was helped in this by the fluent and transparent orchestra sound of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher which sounded almost like a period band in that the playing was always well-balanced, crisp and never too loud or rough, not drowning the singers (Verdi wrote for singers not in competition with them!). While doing perfect justice to the dramatic culmination points Metzmacher withstood the impulse of some conductors that seem to feel the need to whip up early Verdi into loud and glaring barrel organ vulgarity; he followed the composer’s instructions carefully, revealing the truly revolutionary things that Verdi did with the orchestra and which belie Wagner’s dictum that in Italian opera the orchestra is merely an “accompanying guitar” [“Begleitgitarre”].
The role of Macbeth was interpreted by Franco Vassallo, standing in at short notice for the indisposed Davide Damiani: a true velvety and chocolaty Verdi baritone of whom I hope to hear more in the future! His rendering of “Pietà, rispetto, amore” was a highlight. Loy had turned this monologue into a kind of lamento for the dying lady who was at this very moment expiring in Macbeth's arms – a strange Pietà-like scene, evoking King Lear and Cordelia! Christian van Horn gave true nobility to Banquo, as well as for his impressive stature as for his authoritative charcoal bass; Andrea Caré’s Macduff sounded clear as a clarion in his popular tenor aria “O figli miei”(the most conventional number in the opera, Verdi’s one major concession to audiences’ expectations). And special commendation must go to the excellent choir which hit the right strident and lurid notes for the witches and gave a truly moving and ultimately rousing rendering of the Scottish refugees’ chorus “Patria oppressa”.
To sum up a brilliant performance of a favourite opera that was worth the trip to this very expensive place that is Geneva: My seat in the gods, miles away from the stage, was 95 chf (=77 euros), a price for which I get a front stalls seat in Berlin! Plus you need mountaineering skills and abseiling equipment to tackle the really steep steps of this amphitheatre and must absolutely not suffer from fear of heights! I saw some people really struggling. The Grand Théâtre urgently needs air conditioning, it was insufferably hot and stuffy up there on Mont Blanc, without the cooling ice cap of that mountain massif!
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