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An opera weekend. Started Friday with Verdi’s Luisa Miler on DVD with a big bottle of brandy. And then this morning at the Schoolhouse movie theater in Coquitlam with Verdi’s Macbeth. The best part of all this was Anna Netrebko as Lady Macbeth. As the New Yorker notes:
She filled the house with full, grand tone; had no trouble reaching the part’s treacherous high notes; and executed passable coloratura flourishes. Her ability to pack in crowds and whip up publicity, even of a negative kind (like many Russian-born artists, she has supported Vladimir Putin), is to be prized in wobbly times.
To us ordinary folk in a forgotten movie house in Coquitlam on a sunny Saturday morning, she was a marvel, a forceful presence, a glorious voice, a superb actress, and totally the evil bitch that is lady Macbeth–one of the evil ladies of Shakespeare and opera. We applauded in the silence of the movie house, not because anyone could hear us, but simply because we were overtaken by her singing. Her beauty and sensuality detract not a whit from the evil she portrays. As a complimentary commenter says:
Verdi had strong ideas about what he wanted in a Lady Macbeth, as he explained in a letter to a colleague around the time of the work’s 1847 premiere in Florence. (The opera was significantly revised for a Paris production in 1865.) Verdi wrote that Lady Macbeth should be “ugly and evil,” that her voice should be “hard, stifled and dark,” the voice of “the Devil.”
No doubt he was exaggerating to ensure that sopranos with generically beautiful voices would not take on the role. In fact, like great Lady Macbeths before her, Ms. Netrebko used elements of rich, beautifully seductive singing to manipulate her husband, not to mention the Met audience.
As a suburban Vancouver audience we were seduced and mesmerized. Let the New York critics moans and carp; she is magnificent and wonderful and an emotional Saturday involvement in opera.
Now what of Luisa Miller? The production I watched in on DVD from the Malmo Opera in Sweden. A pretty/handsome production. But I can see why this is not as popular as Macbeth. The story is dull, the characters unmitigatedly evil or stupid. And the death of the lovers protracted and annoying–why can’t they just tell what is in their minds and get on with dying? Enough said–we will never see this in Coquitlam.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
