Macbeth

Giuseppe Verdi was fascinated by Shakespeare all his life. And already early in his career, he understood that the British playwright's often tragic universes were a perfect fit for his operas, which were increasingly moving over in a more dramatic direction.

Drama abounds in Macbeth, which Verdi created relatively early in his career, and which is his first embrace of Shakespeare's lavish linguistic universe. Here power is not something you get, but something you take. But power has its price. Macbeth must come true after he kills King Duncan and is tormented by his own dark conscience. A sign of weakness, believes his wife, Lady Macbeth, who is willing to destroy everything and everyone around her in order to fulfill her ambitions.

Verdi, in Macbeth, unites Shakespeare's dark tragedy with his own dramatic and mood-saturated music. Not least in the portrait of Lady Macbeth, who in the final scene becomes emblematic of the scale of the disaster when -- on her way into madness -- she desperately tries to wash the blood off her hands.

In Australian Benedict Andrews' interpretation from 2013, the symbiotic dynamic between the married couple Macbeth is the focal point of the crude staging that underlines the tale's cruelty. Set designer Ashley Martin-Davis's seductively handsome and brutal universe lays bare the characters, while Victoria Behr's costumes draw them even deeper into the nightmare.

Jens Søndergaard from the Opera's soloist ensemble celebrates his 25th anniversary this year, and he does so with his debut as the conscientious Macbeth. Opposite him as Lady Macbeth is the soprano Marigona Qerkezi, who impressed last season as an intense and dramatic Tosca.

Macbeth is sung in Italian with Danish and English subtitles.

Note! In parts of the performance, stroboscope-like lights are used

Recommended from 13 years