Every year, Santa Barbara Theatre produces Leonard Bernstein’s Peter Pan.  This year, instead of renting the costume for Nana, the nursemaid dog, the company decided to have one made to keep in their stock.  They had seen the pictures from Hansel and Gretel on the Utah Opera Costume Rentals website, and found that the animals the costume shop created for that show were the same style they were looking for: cartoonish and yet believable, so they called Rose Brown, Utah Opera’s Costume Director about commissioning the dog costume.

“Nana” is described as a Newfoundland dog in the original story, but with the approval of Santa Barbara Theatre and Rose, Carmen Killam (Milliner and Crafts Supervisor) and Ken Burrell (Cutter/Draper) used a St. Bernard as their inspiration, as they felt the coloring would be better for stage purposes.  After all was decided, Carmen and Ken set to work creating a functionally artistic costume.

In order to create the head of “Nana,” Carmen first found as many pictures of St. Bernards from as many different angles and with as many expressions as she could.  Next, she drew out a profile of the dog to easier adjust it to fit a human head, and also to use as a guideline once she started carving the foam.  It ended up needing to be even bigger than she had originally drawn it, so she scanned the drawing and asked Jared Porter (Technical Director for Utah Opera) to help her scale it up in AutoCad.

To make the mold, Carmen cut slabs of foam that would be glued together to form a cube.  Once the block of foam was solid and the glue was dry, she traced the re-sized profile onto the block.  She found she would need to take a lot of foam off the block before she could get to the detailing, so she used a hot knife to slice strategic chunks of it away.  Then, using sand paper and rasps, she started the arduous process of smoothing and detailing that subtractive sculpting requires.

Carmen found it helpful to have other sets of eyes to stand back with her and look at the mold taking shape.  Other people, she explains, might see something that she missed or that needs to be altered or fixed.  Kelly Nickle (Prop Master), Lane Mortimer (Assistant Prop Master) and Jared Porter, were all extremely helpful with this step.  They were also good to share ideas with and helped with problem solving.

Once the “Nana” head was carved, it was covered with aluminum foil to protect it as she molded Veraform (a wide mesh-like thermoplastic activated by heat) over the head mold.  After taking the shaped Veraform off the mold, Carmen painted the eye and nose areas to help indicate where to leave blank, and where to put fur.

Next Carmen had to figure out where to attach a skull cap within the dog head so it would fit comfortably on the performer’s head.  Ken kindly agreed to be the model, and it was discovered that in order to keep the head level while it is worn, a foam pad needed to be added on top of the skull cap to raise the dog head up a bit.  The jowls and ears are separate pieces from the head base, which helps with the movement and believability.

Carmen used a combination of her patterning and draping skills to cover the head with fur.  It is a tedious process, making sure the fur is going in the right direction and then stitching it to the head.

Meanwhile, Ken used foam and lycra to create a base body form which would be worn by the actor to pad his or her body to help give a better illusion of having a dog body.  He then made a fur suit that is worn over the base, complete with a tail that is attached to a belt inside the fur suit around the waist of the actor.  Ken even made and covered front and hind paws, building up the front paws so that when the performer is down on all fours, both sets of “legs” are the same length.

When put together, the ensemble creates a believable and interesting costume that will doubtlessly be impressive and interesting onstage.

Describe your education: East High School in Salt Lake City | Manhattan School of Music in NYC | and University of Utah (BA)

At what age did you begin musical training? Age 10

What instrument(s) do you play / have you played? Violin, viola, cello, piano

What originally interested you in your instrument? The tragic story of Ginette Neveu’s plane going down in the Atlantic and her perishing with her Stradivarius violin.

How old is your personal instrument and who was its maker? It is the “filius Andrea” by Guarnaius from 1705. The first performance of the Beethoven violin concerto in America was performed on this instrument.

How many years have you performed with the Utah Symphony? This is the 47th season since I joined the orchestra.

With what other orchestras have you performed or do perform? Springfield, MA orchestra, San Francisco Opera, and Oakland Symphony

What has been the highlight of your career to date? Soloing with the Utah Symphony on several occasions, soloing on the Utah Arts tour for two seasons, doing a Guarneri duo with Lenny Braus, and being voted “Most Talented Musician” at the Miss America Pageant.

What has been your most embarrassing moment as a performer? I was a naive 18 year old playing at a funeral for a very prominent man when the G string on my violin broke. “I’m sorry, I broke my G string; I’ll replace it as quickly as I can,” I announced.

Where would you like to see the Utah Symphony in ten years? Able to meet its financial commitments & goals.

Where do you see yourself in ten years? Hopefully, still with Utah Symphony!

How many private students do you have? I have taught privately hundreds of students during the past 48 years.

Are you involved in any community groups, hobbies or activities? Frequent soloist for LDS Church services.

Set years are something like dog years, so although the Carmen set is 28 years old, it looked more like it was 80.  As my Grandma would say, going out in public without your makeup on and your hair done up is a disgrace, so this summer and fall’s task is making the Carmen set look respectable again.

Originally built by San Diego Opera for Houston Grand Opera, the set was used by Houston Grand for several years before eventually being sold to San Diego Opera.  After they used it for a few years, Utah Opera Company purchased the set and now it is one of the most rented sets we own.  (It’s even been rented twice by San Diego Opera since they sold it to us.)

It’s getting split wood repaired, new paint here and there and general repairs as needed so that when it goes on stage in 2010, it’ll look like it took a sip from the fountain of youth!

We’ve also created new soldier jackets for this performance, built by Milivoj Poletan. The script specifies that they be canary yellow:

NOTE: Carmen is more than a month away, but tickets are already moving fast and opening night is nearly sold out! So if you’d like to see this production, purchase tickets soon. Click here for more info.

Describe your education: I went to Olympus High School here in Holladay, Utah while studying cello with Stephen Emerson, former assistant principal cello here.  Then I attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Music Performance and a Master of Music Performance.  After that, for one year I went to the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Professional Studies Program.

At what age did you begin musical training? I had some piano at the age of 7, and for a while at age 12.  At age 9, I was introduced to the cello in the school orchestra program.  But it wasn’t until age 11 that I started private lessons on the cello.

What instrument(s) do you play / have you played? Only those two, in this life…

What originally interested you in your instrument? I remember quitting piano at age 9, and my mother telling me that I should try another instrument.  So when the orchestra instructor at my elementary school introduced the string instruments, I looked them over and decided that the cello looked like a good “boy’s” instrument.  That must have mattered a lot to me then; I see my two sons making similar decisions now.

How old is your personal instrument and who was its maker?
I own two cellos.  Until about nine years ago, I had only owned one instrument, all the way back to my 12th birthday.  That first cello is a Mittenwald, Germany shop instrument, made in 1968, that Peter Prier imported to his shop here in Salt Lake City.  My family calls it the “yellow cello,” because it has a honey gold varnish.  David Freed, a former principal cellist in the Utah Symphony, supposedly liked its sound and chose it for a student of his who was to become my second cello teacher.  She sold it to my parents when she was teaching me and looking for a new cello for herself.  It has a rather small, but pleasant sound, and I managed to play it well enough at my audition here to get the edge over other candidates with arguably much better instruments.  As it turns out, I later discovered that because of all of the recent traveling to auditions, the neck of that cello had come loose in its connection with the main body.  Not only was I auditioning on a student instrument, but it may not have been in good repair!  I guess I was on a roll that day!

My other cello has a story as well.  About eleven years ago, my wife and I were expecting our first son and bought a duplex.  We were becoming new parents, single income earners, mortgagers, and landlords all at once!  As if that wasn’t enough, I also needed a second cello.  It was a hassle for me to haul one in its case to work and back several times a week.  And the smallish sound of the “yellow cello” was so easily covered in louder orchestra passages.  At the time, it felt like buying a cello would be like taking away my son’s college education!  But I knew that enough was enough; I deserved a professional-level instrument.  My mother-in-law Jane Day, a cellist in the Portland, Oregon area, referred me to a friend of hers who was selling a cello.  I liked it and bought it.  It was made in 1988 by Christopher Dungey.  By rather amazing coincidence, it has another connection to Jane.  Chris Dungey learned to select trees for tone wood in the Medford, Oregon area from a local legend Victor Giardineri, who was a dear friend of Jane’s mother.  My cello is the first one Chris made with wood from a maple that he selected and cut with Victor’s help!  As if to signify his first use of his own wood, Chris gave the back of the cello an interesting, touchable “ripple” effect to the grain, which is done by dampening the wood at one point.  He says that it’s the only one of his cellos he has ever done that way.

How many years have you performed with the Utah Symphony? 15

With what other orchestras have you performed or do perform? Students at the Cleveland Institute of Music would make some money playing in the orchestras of Akron and Canton, Ohio.  I was in both.  I played in numerous student and festival orchestras over the years.  And I was hired as a substitute for the Colorado Symphony when I lived in Denver for a while.

What has been the highlight of your career to date? I have little sublime moments here and there during the season, when I know my part well enough to open my attention to a beautiful musical passage.  At the moment, I’m remembering two events.  One is the Shostakovich Violin Concerto with Nadja Solerno-Sonnenberg playing wildly and Roberto Minczuk conducting so well with her.  The other is when we finished a well played concert in Cologne, and were greeted by women with trays holding glasses of Kolsch, the local beer!

What has been your most embarrassing moment as a performer? The cellos and basses begin the second movement of Shostakovich’s famous Fifth Symphony with a forceful note followed by a short rest.  I played good and loud, but it was an e flat instead of an e natural; totally, totally off!  I almost dropped my instrument as if it had turned into a poisonous snake!

Where would you like to see the Utah Symphony in ten years? Times are getting  tougher.  Money is uncertain.  But I think about all of the fine orchestras in Europe, especially eastern Europe, that made it through wars and revolutions, communism and economic depression.  The people wanted to continue having their stories and lives expressed through this amazing sound of a full symphony orchestra, no matter the circumstances.  This kind of music is transfiguring and healing for me, and I believe it has the potential to be so for most of the Utah community.  I would love to see this orchestra on a stable financial footing, with enthusiastic leadership, attracting the best possible artistic talent and lifting the people’s spirits.

Where do you see yourself in ten years? Because I have roots in Utah, I believe that I will still be here at that time, making music and teaching it to others.

Do you perform regularly in any other local musical projects? For several summers now I have been honored to play in the Intermezzo Chamber Music series led by fellow musicians David Porter and his wife Vedrana Subotic.  My wife is often able to join me.  A couple of years ago we played the original sextet version of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nachte, which was a tremendous highlight for me.

Are you involved in any community groups, hobbies or activities? I try to grow a garden.  I’m rather proud of my potato patch between the sidewalk and street where all of those grass and weeds used to be.  I’ve commuted to work by bicycle from the beginning, and now I have a little cargo trailer so I can take care of other errands without a car.  I had a car converted to all electric power a couple of years ago, and I’m active in an electric vehicle group here.

When I arrived at Manhattan School of Music in the fall of 1995 to study with Pinchas Zukerman and Patinka Kopec, I knew the next few years would be defining ones in my life as a musician. However, those years were nothing like I’d ever anticipated.

My first lesson with Mr. Zukerman jolted me out of a lot of ideas I had about myself. I entered the studio wearing my most chic ensemble, a taupe double-breasted suit (from Penney’s, of course) with a floral tie and burgundy wing-tips. It was the 90s, I was in New York City, and I was destined to be the “next big thing” in the viola world. I put bow to string and began Bartok’s viola concerto, a piece that for the last year or more I’d destroyed the competition circuit all over Oklahoma and Kansas. I made it through the first eight bars when Mr. Zukerman, decked out in green sweatpants, stopped me. “When I close my eyes,” he said, “I hear nice things. But when I look at what you’re doing I have no idea how you’re making it work.” The viola went back into the case and the rest of that first lesson was spent with pencil in hand in place of bow. By the time I’d figured out how to hold the thing, raise it up and down using curling motions of my fingers, examined the way the right thumb completed a circle and itself curled and straightened, and made crisscrossing motions using my weak pinkie finger I was exhausted. And blissfully released until next week.

That first lesson should have been a clue. I wasn’t there to blast through repertoire, win competitions, or be a viola idol. I was to be rebuilt from basic fundamentals. It was difficult. I resisted and didn’t have enough maturity or humility to admit that this was exactly what I needed. There were tears. There was the frustration of doing well in the school orchestra auditions but falling miserably short at lessons. There was the frustration of enduring months of D-major scales and simple Kreutzer etudes. At least this is what I perceived. What was actually happening was that skill by skill, day by day, week by week I was building a vocabulary on my instrument. I was developing a concept of sound and a philosophy of efficiency.

By the time the first semester ended I was given a movement of Bach to learn. I took it home and planned my interpretation. Rubato here, color change here, senza vibrato here. Next lesson: the first measure of the heartbreaking d-minor Prelude reduced to half-bow (down), half-bow (up), whole bow (sustain!), return to frog (lightening pressure so as to not change tone quality), whole-bow to the tip. Again. Again. Every note, shift, bow change, and string crossing had a plan. FLAT HAIR! I had expected a deep and meaningful conversation about Bach, style, phrasing, love, life, and death. You know, “artistic” stuff. It wasn’t time for that yet.

I suppose all of that seems a bit dry. It certainly seemed tedious to me at the time. But when I look back, I never fail to be deeply touched and honored that an artist of Mr. Zukerman’s stature had the patience, time, and enormous energy to try to create from the bottom up a complete player out of me.

In one of my final lessons before graduating, Mr. Zukerman summed it up: “We don’t expect you to leave here and be done. What we’ve tried to do is give you a vocabulary to work with when you’re out in the world.” It took me a few more years to start putting it all together, but now, when confronted with a daunting new piece, I realize that performing every phrase is just a matter of going back to that vocabulary, stringing it together into sentences, and making music. Mr. Zukerman’s and Ms. Kopec’s attention to the long-term growth of their students has helped me become “the next biggest thing…onstage at Abravanel Hall (besides the piano)” where I get to play great music with amazing colleagues in a most beautiful part of the world. Thanks, Mr. Zukerman, and enjoy your time here in Utah.

Brant Bayless is the Principal Violist for Utah Symphony. Don’t miss Maestro Pinchas Zukerman conducting the Utah Symphony Nov. 6 – 7 on an all-Brahms program.

From Jason Michael Paul, the creator and producer of Play! A Video Game Symphony:

“I am extremely pleased that the Utah Symphony will be presenting Play! A Video Game Symphony! The Utah Symphony is an extremely talented orchestra that further legitimizes and adds a tremendous amount of credibility to the art of video game music. The fans have been eager to have a show in Utah so I am hopeful that they will come in full force to experience the magic that this show has to offer.”

Utah Symphony will present Play! A Video Game Symphony on Tuesday, November 17th. This isn’t the first time that Utah Symphony has delved into the world of video game music and it certainly won’t be the last! Video game music is truly finding its way onto the concert podium, and the academic world isn’t far behind (check out this academic article on the semantic contributions of video game music to the world of video games: http://gamestudies.org/0401/whalen/; or to delve into the world of the quasi-acedemic, Wikipedia has an excellent history of video game music here, including a history of video game concert performance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_music).

Says gamer Dave Sullivan, “Some of the older music is interesting because the composer could only have four notes of a fixed tone playing at the same time – so they had to try to use funkiness to make it interesting (i.e. Super Mario Bros), and seeing it orchestrated gives a new dimension to what was previously limited to a bunch of beeps.”

So how has video game music affected you? Please write in five of your best gaming moments/memories ever as a comment and post them one at a time with a tagline for the upcoming Play! performance. You might even see your headline used!

Here’s a complete list of what you’ll hear on November 17:

PLAY! Opening Fanfare by Nobuo Uematsu
Super Mario Bros.® by Koji Kondo
Lost Odyssey by Nobuo Uematsu
Sonic the Hedgehog™ by Masato Nakamura
Battlefield by Joel Eriksson
Shenmue by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi
Castlevania by Michiru Yamane
Kingdom Hearts™ by Yoko Shimomura
THE ELDER SCROLLS® IV: OBLIVION™ by Jeremy Soule
Chrono TriggerTM / Chrono Cross™ by Yasunori Mitsuda
World of Warcraft® by Jason Hayes
HALO® by Martin O’Donnell
The Legend of Zelda® by Koji Kondo

You’d better hurry to get tickets for this performance, because they’re going fast! KBER-FM 101.1 will be at Abravanel Hall until 7 PM that day with Rock Band and free giveaways. Click here to purchase tickets.

All great stories come with an accompanying curse. The Macbeth curse is probably the most famous of all superstition curses surrounding a narrative, which makes it 100% more awesome. According to legend, saying the word “Macbeth” inside a theatre causes Disaster with a capital D. Everything from death on stage to the presenting theatre going out of business to forgotten lines could happen. Indeed (according to legend), at the premiere, an actor died on stage because a real dagger was accidentally used instead of the prop knife. Hopefully that props master was fired! Why these horrific results, you may ask? Explanations include claims that 1) authentic spells are cast on stage by the witches and that Shakespeare stole the lines from actual covens who thereafter cursed the play (lesson: never plagiarize, especially from witches), 2) the original props master stole an authentic cauldron from a coven and they then cursed the play (of course it was the same props master who was the source of the real dagger incident…), and 3) it has even been postulated that Shakespeare cursed the play himself so that he would be the only person ever able to direct it. How kind of him to consider posterity. Regardless of the original source, it has clothed the work in a shroud of mystery.

To avoid saying the name of the play, you can refer to the opera and/or play as “The Scottish Play,” “Mackers,” “Macdiddy,” or “MacBee.”  If you mistakenly uttered the Cursed Word inside the theatre before you read this blog, never fear! There are two cleansing rituals: A) Turn three times, spit over your left shoulder, swear (yes, we give you permission), and/or recite a line from another Shakespeare play (”Angels and ministers of grace defend us” from Hamlet I.iv is most popular, but if that doesn’t come immediately to mind, at least everyone knows, “to be or not to be”). B) Leave the theatre, spin around while brushing yourself off, and say “Macbeth” three times. How either of those actually cleanse the theatre is rather beyond rational thought but at least it should make for some great entertainment tonight! Despite whether or not you believe in the curse, even we at Utah Opera have experienced our share of oddities during this production!

1. Utah Opera originally intended to do a new set build for this production, but the details couldn’t get worked out.
2. The original conductor unfortunately had to cancel in August.
3. A family member of one of the cast passed away just days before rehearsals began and as a result that cast member missed the first few days of rehearsal.
4. A super actually passed away at the beginning of the rehearsal process.
5. There have been abundant health issues (including the current conductor having to miss almost a week of rehearsal).
6. A chorus member with a hand prosthetic accidentally poked herself in the eye causing some damage.

Macbeth sure makes things exciting for us! Don’t miss a minute of this exciting show, running at Capitol Theatre October 17 – 25. Click here for tickets.

[This blog entry is an except from Vivace's award-winning primer. To read the rest, click here. Also, join Vivace on Saturday, October 17th, receive a discount, AND you'll get to join the Macbeth cast for a party at The New Yorker following the performance. The $35 Vivace price includes the performance and after-party. Click here for more info.]

On Friday, October 2, Utah Opera and Salt Lake Acting Company partnered to bring two great divas of the stage together: Brenda Harris, who will perform Lady Macbeth with Utah Opera, and Anne Cullimore Decker, who will play Maria Callas in Master Class. Enjoy the result!

October 2009 marks an important anniversary for Utah Opera: exactly 10 years ago, Christopher McBeth began his work in artistic direction with the company. It is fitting that for his anniversary, the company will produce Macbeth, an opera that is both one of Christopher’s favorites among the standard opera repertoire and one that is a near namesake.

Christopher is quick to point out that his name is not unlucky—that there is no little “a” and there is a “big B” (many actors believe saying “Macbeth” instead of “the Scottish play” will jinx a performance). But he’s still a Scot, so he can’t help but enjoy Lucia and Macbeth, two famous Scottish operas.

I suspect that you have noted the stellar quality of the last decade of Utah Opera productions, and particularly the superb casting in productions like last season’s Don Pasquale and Regina. Despite recent financial downturns and funding challenges, Christopher has managed to hire great singing actors for our productions, and his technical staff has continued creating impressive visual spectacles on the Capitol Theatre stage.

Christopher did not begin as a lover of opera: his father was a United Methodist minister in Wisconsin, so Christopher’s first musical experiences were singing hymns in church gatherings. He went to college in Iowa intent on becoming a high school choir teacher, but there was introduced to opera and changed his major to vocal performance (listen to his speaking voice just once, and you’ll hear his rich baritone).

Christopher married soprano Julie Poe just after graduation, and they both earned master’s degrees in vocal performance at Baylor University in Texas. But gradually they both decided that they didn’t want the separated lifestyle a singing career requires, and they both started exploring the behind-the-scenes side of opera. Julie now is personal assistant to USUO’s CEO, and she occasionally sings in the opera chorus (she will be onstage in Macbeth).

Christopher put his own singing aside to become an administrator. Most critical in his learning curve were two experiences: serving as personal assistant to David Gockley, famed general director of Houston Grand Opera, now at San Francisco; and working as both director of production and artistic administrator for Fort Worth Opera.

The McBeths have dedicated their lives to making opera, but they also wanted to settle those lives in a beautiful place. They found the perfect combination of those goals in their positions with Utah Opera, where, in addition to producing excellent mainstage opera, Christopher oversees the young artist Ensemble program. He especially delights in launching new talents, and in bringing back exceptional artists he has helped discover to enrich our Utah Opera productions.

Happiest 10th Anniversary, Christopher!

In 1846, the manager of the Teatro della Pergola in Florence commissioned 33-year-old Giuseppe Verdi to create an opera on a topic of his own choice.  Since the triumph of his 3rd opera, Nabucco, three years previously, Verdi had become a composer over whom opera companies vied, and they had kept him busy. The opera for Florence, set to premiere in March 1847, would be Verdi’s 10th composition for the opera stage.

Verdi had several possible subjects in mind for this commission, but soon dedicated himself to Macbeth because of the availability for the project of Felice Varesi, a baritone of remarkable vocal, dramatic and intellectual abilities.  In Verdi’s mind, the role of Macbeth required a baritone; had a stellar tenor been available instead, he would have pursued a different subject altogether.

The choice of Macbeth was the first manifestation on the stage of Verdi’s fascination with Renaissance British playwright William Shakespeare.  Verdi didn’t speak English; his passion for the Bard of Avon developed from reading Italian prose translations of the plays.  He wrote, “He is one of my favorite poets.  I have had him in my hands from my earliest youth, and I read and reread him continually.” Verdi’s devotion to Shakespeare is evident in his choice of Shakespearean plots for several of his operas.  Macbeth is the first he selected for an operatic setting.  Later he worked on a King Lear, but never completed the project.  For his final two works (out of a total of 25 operas), and after a decade of not composing at all, he emerged with Otello and Falstaff, both now regarded as operatic masterpieces.

Knowing of his affection for Shakespeare, we shouldn’t be surprised that Verdi always emphasized the importance of drama in his operas. To Varesi he wrote, “I shall never stop telling you to study the words and the dramatic situation; then the music will come right of its own accord.” He was tyrannical about getting the story-telling just right. According to the memoirs of the first Lady Macbeth, a singer known as La Barbieri-Nini, Verdi made her study the sleepwalking scene for three months, and made her rehearse a major duet scene with the baritone more than 150 times, including one final time on dress rehearsal night, in the lobby, while the overture was playing!

For both Macbeth and his lady, Verdi insisted that dramatic impact was even more important than beauty of sound.  He told Varesi that his part should be practically “declaimed,” and in a letter about the casting of a revival of Macbeth, Verdi wrote, “I would rather that Lady didn’t sing at all….I would rather that Lady’s voice were rough, hollow, stifled….something devilish.”

In preparation for composing his Macbeth, Verdi himself wrote a careful synopsis of the plot. He condensed Shakespeare’s Acts 1 and 2 into the opera’s first act, and dedicated one act each to the remaining three acts of the play.  What we get in the opera is the essence of Shakespeare’s Macbeth: a good man—goaded on by his own ambition, witches’ prophecies, and his wife—commits an evil act.  That is, he kills King Duncan, whom, up until then, he has served loyally and nobly, in order to become king himself. Thus begins the eddy that escalates into a whirlpool of wicked activity from which Macbeth cannot escape, no matter how miserable it makes him. He has murderers attack his friend Banquo, whose progeny are predicted by the same witches to become kings.  When Macduff seems to question him, Macbeth has the young man’s family murdered.  Under Macbeth’s rule, the entire country decays.  Still insecure, Macbeth returns to the witches and receives three more predictions which convince him he lives a charmed life.  Meanwhile, buried guilt surfaces in Macbeth’s wife:  sleepwalking, she yearns to remove the blood of King Duncan from her hands.  When she dies, Macbeth can hardly spare a moment to mourn her.  He is finally vanquished at the hands of Macduff, and Duncan’s son Malcolm rightfully takes the helm of Scotland, determined to steer the ship of state to calmer, less muddied waters.

Verdi and his librettists managed to get all of this basic story into their opera, an amazing feat given that it generally takes at least three times as long to sing as to say anything.  Of course minor characters were eliminated and speeches were trimmed.  Macbeth’s ten lines of “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” for example, which are given in response to the death of his wife, become just two:  “Life’s…a tale | told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, | signifying nothing.”  Furthermore, not all of Macbeth’s soliloquies, through which we chart the decline of a good man in the play, survive in the opera.  We get much of his Act 2 dagger speech in aria form (the soliloquy’s natural equivalent in opera), and another aria in Act 4, but Verdi’s Macbeth has less solo time on stage.  He resolves much more quickly to take his murderous path than does his counterpart in Shakespeare.

Macbeth’s role is smaller in the opera, but Lady Macbeth receives a much larger share than in Shakespeare’s play, where she performs her function of pushing her husband to regicide and then gradually fades from her husband’s attention (and ours) until her “out damn spot” sleepwalking scene.  In the opera, Lady Macbeth is involved in more of the murders and many more of the scenes:  she has three aria scenes, and two central duets with her husband, as well as scenes with the chorus.

It is possible, of course, that Verdi merely conceded to operatic tradition for divas when he created a larger role for the leading lady.  He was a composer who both did and did not bow to such conventions.  It is easy to find typical music structures in some of Macbeth’s arias, and act-ending choral finales in which every character turns and sings to the audience.  But Macbeth is also an opera without a central love story (gasp), and one in which the title character has no entrance aria, only a duet with the other low-voiced male playing Banquo.

Also atypical of 19th-century opera (and Shakespearean drama, of course) is Verdi’s extensive and dramatic use of the chorus.  In fact, Verdi regarded his witches’ chorus as a third central character.  He took Shakespeare’s three witches and made them three covens of witches.  About them he wrote, “…the main roles of this opera are, and can only be, three: Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the chorus of witches.  The witches dominate the drama; everything stems from them—rude and gossipy in Act I, exalted and prophetic in Act III.  They make up a real character, and one of the greatest importance.”

As well as populating the witches’ scenes, Verdi created a full chorus of murderers (in contrast to Shakespeare’s two men) who bumble the killing of Banquo, allowing the son to escape.  In addition, Verdi accomplished the effect of several small scenes from the play when he created the Act 4 chorus “Patria oppressa.”  Macbeth has so abused his power, Scotland is in ruins and patriots fleeing the corrupt state pause for a mournful hymn to their betrayed motherland.  Verdi thus communicates the socially-destructive result of Macbeth’s vile acts through this element unique to music theatre: a group of fifty people singing in moving harmony.

In the end, each of us will decide whether Verdi’s musical version of the tale of Macbeth, 11th-century Scottish tyrant, effectively communicates the tragedy Shakespeare crafted.  Scholars suggest that Shakespeare’s Macbeth succeeds because its protagonist captures our compassion and imagination:  he is a good man who makes a bad choice and then finds he cannot escape what he has become.  We pity what he’s done to himself; we fear the possibility that we could ever be like him.  Investigate that question as you enjoy Utah Opera’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth:  what captures your imagination and compassion, once Verdi’s music and interpretation are added to Shakespeare’s tragedy?

Click here to learn more or to purchase tickets for Macbeth.