Last year I was lucky to see 2 superb production of this opera: one was staged by Ivo van Hoove and presented in Lyon, and another was the most delightful Peter Konwitschny production in Leipzig. Before that I was lucky to see the Richard Jones production in Lille (one of those Glyndebourne productions that didn't make it to DVD even though it was hugely more deserving than the awful Meistersinger or their very mediocre recent Don Giovanni, for example), and the next back in my memory is the Krzysztof Warlikowski production in Brussels that was one of my most astounding moments at the opera in general [which tells a lot since I'm not an unconditional fan of Verdi's work].
Two productions that I did not blog about and should be considered in the league with the show by Richard Jones were the Dima Tcherniakov production presented in Paris (amazingly conducted by Teodor Currentzis!) and the Munich show staged by Martin Kusej. Tcherniakov production was very impressive, very clever, and very contemporary, but in the bulky sets the show somehow missed its target: it looks great on DVD though. As for the Martin Kusej show, I remember I was very enthusiastic despite the critics that were fiercely trashing the show as not really adapted for the opera. Well, the opera critics are very conservative but I did not think that the modernity of the Kusej work disturbed them the most... You can judge it for yourself in less than an hour time when Macbeth will be live streamed from the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich on this link
Cast: Zeljko Lucic, Nadja Michael, Wookyung Kim, Goran Juric, Emanuele D'Aguanno... Massimo Zanetti will conduct (hopefully well!)
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| It's from Macbeth despite being reminiscent scene from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk |
