Verdi's Operas: Macbeth

This year (and probably part of next year), I’m listening to the operas of Giuseppe Verdi. I’ve heard some of his operas and have seen Macbeth and Simon Boccanegra. But I’ve been curious about his several others. So, I decided to purchase the 2013 75-CD set of Verdi’s operas (and additional music), and then listen in order. For reference I'm reading Charles Osborne, The Complete Operas of Verdi (New York: Knopf, 1979). 

Macbeth premiered at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence March 14, 1847. In a revised version, it premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique, April 21, 1865. The later version is the one most often performed. This recording is conducted by Claudio Abbado with the Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Alla Scalla, with Piero Cappuccilli, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Sherley Verrett, and Placido Domingo among the cast. 

We loved seeing Macbeth performed a few years ago by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis! How lovely to listen to the opera again!  

Osborne writes that “Verdi’s Macbeth is worthy to stand beside Shakespeare’s.” While not disparaging Verdi’s early works, he writes that “with Macbeth Verdi takes an immense leap forward: a leap away from the conventional demands of the time, and towards dramatic truth and a musical style which combines psychological depth with a continuing abundance of that prolific and individual melodic gift which was never to desert him. His intuitive feeling for Shakespeare was obviously to a large extent responsible for this.” (Of course, two of Verdi's most acclaimed masterpieces are based on Shakespeare's work: Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893).

Verdi himself wrote a prose version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and gave it to poet Francesco Piave to write a libretto. Piave was a reliable writer for Verdi: over the years he wrote the librettos for Ernadi, I due Foscari, Attila, both versions of Macbeth, Il corsaro, Stiffelio, Rigoletto, La traviata, Simon Boccanegra, Aroldo, and La forza del destino.  

In another chapter of his book, Osborne discusses the mystery of an unwritten Shakespearian opera, King Lear (or, as it would've been in Italian, Il re Lear). As early as 1843, Verdi expressed interest in such an opera. During the 1850s, he paid the playwright Antonia Somma to write the libretto. Yet Verdi always set the project aside to write other operas. 

Osborne explains that something about Lear’s madness, or perhaps Lear’s feeling for Cordelia, unsettled Verdi and kept him psychologically from tackling the subject (pp. 77-82).