Originally scheduled for performances in 2020, out-going Artistic Director Stuart Maunder’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth has been worth the wait.

Macbeth, State Opera South Australia, 2023. Photo © Tyr Liang

Even though the composer had already completed 10 operas, with Macbeth (1847) he started to revolutionise opera, particularly in terms of dramatic structured musical forms, leading towards his idea of more flowing, through-composed works that reflected on contemporary Italian politics and philosophies. There’s little doubt that Verdi was an ardent Shakespearean. He’d already toyed with the idea of adapting King Lear as an opera, but felt Macbeth adapted itself better to the operatic form. Often referred to as an ‘opera senza amore’, it centres upon ruthless ambition.

Whilst Verdi and his librettist Francesco Maria Piave adhere closely to the plot of the ‘Scottish play’, there are new and inventive ideas designed to delight the audience. As this was a time of wide spread political discontent, Shakespeare’s plot provides an ongoing metaphor. During the Bard’s own time, there was unrest due to the replacement of the Tudors with James VI of Scotland; unrest which provides a fine comparison with then contemporary Italy....