One of the best of Verdi's earlier operas, Macbeth has a distinctive energy to which, in this performance, conductor Sinopoli gives full rein. His excellent chorus--terrifyingly skittish witches, mournful exiles, sinister-facetious murderers, outraged and vengeful courtiers in the aftermath of Duncan's murder--is as much a participant as the principals, and the orchestral accompaniment reminds us that what the young Verdi lacked of his later subtlety he made up in sheer vigour. Renato Bruson is an extraordinary Macbeth, caught in a nightmare of his own making and unable... to find release save through further killings and eventually self-destruction; Maria Zampieri has the sort of voice Verdi specified and which many productions avoid, a voice prepared to give its all, not to any sort of lyric beauty but to a harshness that is dramatically appropriate--this is a fine characterisation. Dennis O'Neill has comparatively little to do, but makes his vengeance aria a memorable reminder that guilt and shame are not all that this opera is about. --Roz Kaveney [show more]
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