{"id":353224,"date":"2026-09-22T05:48:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T05:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/353224\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T05:48:21","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T05:48:21","slug":"in-verdis-macbeth-at-the-met-foul-is-fair-in-love-and-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/353224\/","title":{"rendered":"In Verdi’s Macbeth at the Met, Foul Is Fair in Love and War"},"content":{"rendered":"

In debuting director Louisa Proske\u2019s season-opening new production of Verdi\u2019s Macbeth\u00a0(through October 20), the principal couple is not just power-mad; their violent quest for the throne has a deeply erotic charge. Under the baton of Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin, Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star as the Shakespearean couple with a lust for control\u2014and for lust itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUnsex me here.\u201d Lady Macbeth\u2019s notorious command is easy enough to follow. To be ambitious one must be cruel; to be cruel one must be a man. But in Shakespeare\u2019s tragedy as in Verdi\u2019s opera, things are never quite so simple. Macbeth\u2019s forceful ascent to the throne, through the murder of King Duncan (and then Banquo, and then Macduff\u2019s entire family), is not the outcome of mere masculine ambition\u2014as the Lady might suggest in her early soliloquy\u2014but rather a peculiar form of marital bliss.<\/p>\n

For director Louisa Proske, who makes her company debut with the Met\u2019s new production of Macbeth, the violence perpetrated by the power-hungry pair is a kind of \u201cperverse lovemaking.\u201d \u201cThe murder becomes their project, their secret, their crime,\u201d Proske says. \u201cYou get a sense they\u2019ve talked about it under the sheets. It\u2019s almost a point of arousal for them.\u201d At the Met, this unholy union is portrayed by preeminent Verdi baritone Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen, the world\u2019s reigning dramatic soprano, who last shared the stage as the title diva and Baron Scarpia in a heated run of Puccini\u2019s Tosca during the 2024\u201325 season.<\/p>\n

The visions of murderous matrimony Proske lays out would feel familiar to Giuseppe Verdi, who, in adapting Shakespeare\u2019s play, expanded the role of Lady Macbeth in crucial ways. In the opera, for example, it is only as a result of her prodding that Macbeth resolves to slay Banquo, his comrade whose descendants are prophesied by the Witches to reign over Scotland. When the opera was revived in Paris in 1865\u2014nearly two decades after its 1847 world premiere in Florence\u2014Verdi inserted a chilling aria for Lady Macbeth in the subsequent scene, \u201cLa luce langue,\u201d which has no equivalent in Shakespeare\u2019s text.<\/p>\n

Yet the composer hardly played fast and loose with his source material. On the contrary, Verdi was a devoted Shakespearean. Macbeth was his first Shakespeare adaptation, followed decades later by Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893)\u2014his final opera\u2014based largely on The\u00a0Merry Wives of Windsor. He also toyed with the idea of adapting King Lear; a completed libretto was found among the papers at his estate following his death, as well as a versified draft of La Tempesta and a French prose\u00a0work called Rowena based on the Bard\u2019s late Celtic romance Cymbeline.<\/p>\n

Beyond underscoring the influence of Lady Macbeth on her sometimes-feckless husband, Verdi also literally enlarged the role of the Witches so that each of Shakespeare\u2019s trio of \u201cweird sisters\u201d is represented by a small chorus of at least six singers. In the new Met staging, 38 singers\u2014as well as a dozen dancers\u2014make up the coven, which lingers on and around the stage for the duration of the opera. Multiplying like maggots on a corpse, the Witches feed on the corruption and greed of the Macbeths, creating a world whose moral decay is mirrored by the deterioration of the built environment. \u201cThere is a sense that they have invaded, they\u2019re peeping in through the ceiling, through the cracks in the walls,\u201d Proske explains.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A scene from Macbeth at the Metropolitan Opera
\n (Marty Sohl \/ Met Opera)<\/p>\n

The Witches\u2019 centrality is part and parcel of Verdi\u2019s operatic design. \u201cThe roles in this opera are three and no more than three,\u201d the composer famously wrote to French impresario and publisher L\u00e9on Escudier in 1865. \u201cLady Macbeth, Macbeth, and the chorus of the Witches.\u201d In this way, he effectively consolidates the action of Shakespeare\u2019s tragedy by focusing on its primary dramatic movers. He was evidently pleased with the results, having contributed more directly to the libretto than with any previous work. \u201cHere now is this Macbeth,\u201d Verdi wrote upon sending the score to its dedicatee, Antonio Barezzi, \u201cwhich is dearer to me than all my other operas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Verdi, Proske, too, had an inspiring early encounter with Shakespeare. Born in Berlin, she moved with her family to the United States for a year and a half at the age of 12. \u201cOne of the first pieces I was assigned in school was Julius Caesar,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI started reading these words, which were very obscure to me, and they had a sort of incantatory power. I started looking up every single word, and that\u2019s kind of how I learned English.\u201d Since then, Proske\u2014who co-founded the innovative New York\u2013based company Heartbeat Opera in 2013\u2014has built an impressive Shakespearean r\u00e9sum\u00e9, having studied the author at Cambridge University and directed productions of Cymbeline, As You Like It, and Macbeth, as well as Verdi\u2019s Falstaff.<\/p>\n

But for Proske, the Bard isn\u2019t merely a poet; he\u2019s also a keen observer of the fragility of political institutions. \u201cShakespeare is one of the preeminent thinkers about social\u00a0\u00a0disintegration,\u201d she remarks. \u201cI think he was one of the artists who really articulated the terror of living in an era that is deeply divisive, with the sense of the world having gone mad.\u201d Reflecting this focus on political violence run amok, the set of Macbeth, designed by Jon Bausor, is replete with rubble, bombed-out apertures, walls splitting apart, and towering funeral pyres. Costumes designed by Montana Levi Blanco<\/a> combine medieval and Elizabethan silhouettes with modern materials\u2014like latex, in the case of the Witches\u2014to depict a world out of joint.<\/p>\n

That the atmosphere of Macbeth might be described as harsh, hollow, or ugly is just as Verdi would like it. Indeed, in this work the composer sought to reject the tyranny of \u201cthose flowing, conventional melodies\u201d typical of bel canto style, \u201cwhich can be found everywhere and which are all alike.\u201d He counseled Marianna Barbieri-Nini, the soprano who premiered the role of Lady Macbeth, that the sleepwalking scene should be \u201cacted and declaimed\u201d but not sung. That aria, \u201cUna macchia \u00e8 qui tuttora,\u201d includes no virtuosic displays of rapid-fire arpeggios, scales, and ornaments. Instead, Verdi gives us halting, short phrases in the vocal line; a steady, repetitive orchestral accompaniment; and a fragmented style of expression, as if her capacity to sing is going out like the flickering candle she carries.<\/p>\n

Lady Macbeth\u2019s depleted, faltering quality in this scene has yielded an intriguing new dramaturgical idea. \u201cLady Macbeth will be pregnant at the beginning of the opera, then slowly her belly will grow\u2014being at its largest when they decide to kill Macduff\u2019s family,\u201d Proske says. \u201cAfter that moment, she loses the child, so in the sleepwalking scene, she\u2019s no longer pregnant.\u201d Macbeth is indeed a work preoccupied with questions of reproduction, offspring, and lineage. (Shakespeare wrote the play in homage to James I of England, who was believed to be a descendant of Banquo.) The greatest existential threat to Macbeth\u2019s ascendancy is not another general, but Banquo\u2019s son Fleance, who outmaneuvers the assassins targeting him and his father.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have given suck,\u201d Lady asserts in Act I, Scene 7 of the play, \u201cand know \/ How tender \u2019tis to love the babe that milks me.\u201d For some readers of Macbeth, this remark serves as evidence that the couple has previously had a child. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing in the text that contradicts this idea that Lady Macbeth could be pregnant,\u201d says Proske. \u201cSo on top of the madness of the crimes that she\u2019s committed, she\u2019s also dealing with the loss of her child.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Lise Davidsen in Macbeth at the Metropolitan Opera
\n (Marty Sohl \/ Met Opera)<\/p>\n

For Davidsen, who also sees the Lady as more than an emasculating villain, this notion adds an exciting new dimension to the character. \u201cPeople think Lady is power hungry and ruthless. But, of course, she is so much more than that,\u201d reflects the soprano, who continues her partnership with Met Music Director Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin following their standout collaborations in Tosca, Wagner\u2019s Tristan und Isolde, and Verdi\u2019s La Forza del Destino. \u201cI look forward to seeing how we portray not just the power, but the vulnerability, the love, the other side of her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bringing this perspective to bear on one of the greatest characters in all of literature and opera is no small feat, and Kelsey sees his co-star as more than up to the task. \u201cShe\u2019s willing to gamble a little bit with characterization and how far she\u2019s willing to take it,\u201d Kelsey says of Davidsen. \u201cAn artist like that just gives you so much dramatically.\u201d (Kelsey and Davidsen are joined, in a bit of luxury casting, by tenor Freddie De Tommaso as Macduff and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as Banquo.)<\/p>\n

Early critics of Verdi\u2019s opera took issue with its lack of romance, and one reviewer went so far as to suggest that the composer didn\u2019t know his Shakespeare. \u201cOh, in this they are very wrong,\u201d Verdi protested in an 1865 letter, \u201cNo, by God, no.\u201d As the Met\u2019s new production of Macbeth reveals, Verdi had a keen sense of this deeply Shakespearean truth: Foul is fair in love and war.<\/p>\n

Nicholas T Rinehart is the Met\u2019s Director of Education.<\/p>\n

\"Macbeth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In debuting director Louisa Proske\u2019s season-opening new production of Verdi\u2019s Macbeth\u00a0(through October 20), the principal couple is not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-353224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}