Verdi's “Macbeth” at La Scala: Augmented Reality of Greed for Power

For a few days each year, the Teatro alla Scala becomes the fourth estate in the state.

The opera house subdues the media with unprecedented firepower.

Disarmed, Italy's journalists deliver their microphones and writing pads to the chief conductor, the director and the singers.

There are no questions, endless answers.

The media audience is explained what the opening of the season at Sankt Ambrosius means.

Celebrating the theater becomes a matter of state.

The day after, the headlines reliably proclaim the “Triumph of Scala”.

That year Giuseppe Verdi's opera “Macbeth” was produced.

The new staging quickly brings them to the concept of power: in order to gain power, people are capable of the worst.

Verdi had formulated this truth in the shock-and-awe aesthetic of the Grand Opéra between 1847 and 1865.

Since then, hardly anything has gotten better, a lot has gotten worse, the stimuli are increased, the senses become dull.

Is that why - and is the opera not a total work of art?

- the Milanese director packs Verdi's musical aesthetics into the aesthetics of the Hollywood science fiction film.

The big city is a dark forest

As started in previous years, the director Davide Livermore turns the Scala into a scene of innovation in presentation technology. And certainly such an innovation project is a delicate undertaking in a country that is often defensive against the demands of modernity, and in an opera house that has been developed into a fortress of cultural identity. If there is one motive that everyone in Italy accepts, it is to prove the country's top position in the world. Livermore's most important stage means, controlled by the Milanese studio Giò Forma, is the LED wall, which takes the place of the classic stage design. Unlike a screen, the LED wall lights up from the inside. The finest transitions of visual impressions can be modeled on the computer - transitions, states of flow,as they were reserved for music at the time of Verdi.

This can already be seen in the first act, where Verdi's image of nature is soon transformed into that of an American metropolis.

First the trees shown, then the skyscrapers both embody a vertical pattern, so the structure remains the same while one design is morphed into the other.

This continues throughout the performance.

While Verdi's setting follows the dualism of a feminine-magical nature and the power architecture of Macbeth's Scottish castle, in Livermore the big city itself becomes a nature in which people wander around without living, until the destruction of Macbeth also dissolves the city into a gigantic ball of fire.

Stage effects for millions

That is meant as overwhelming, but at the same time a quote, a quote from Christopher Nolan's film "Inception" from 2010. Certainly, Livermore's aesthetics also understand those who cannot enjoy the recognition effect from the cinema. Above all, however, the transfer of the cinema film is an offer to the worldwide audience of the

. Livermore stages the opera for this audience, and as the saying goes, the figures prove him right: the Teatro alla Scala has 2030 seats. If it is possible to play all seven performances to a full house - not guaranteed in the age of Corona - the opera will reach a good 14,000 spectators. In contrast, the audience this production reaches via television, cinema and video presumably starts at two million. For them, the spectacular stage aesthetics are spectacularized yet again by cameras that are placed in the stage and that present an “augmented” reality with dizzying perspectives in the digital image.

The singing stars - Luca Salsi in the role of Macbeth, Anna Netrebko as Lady Macbeth, supported by the form-conscious conductor Riccardo Chailly - fit well into this concept insofar as Verdi's vocal aesthetic is itself one of the spectacular. In “Macbeth” motivated by magic, greed, horror and madness, it ranges from whispering to almost screaming, from whispering to almost screaming, from the barely audible response of the vocal cords in the depths to extreme heights, stretched to tear.

Everyone in Milan copes with that with flying colors. Luca Salsi does even more: he creates the drama of his Macbeth, which Shakespeare expresses primarily in language, as a drama of the voice. Great! Artistically, that's what Verdi was aiming for. He even wished his Lady Macbeth to have an “ugly” voice, but art that does not want to please is out of the question on a gala evening at La Scala.

Basically, the staging shows a lack of interest in people. The role of women as “witches” remains completely misunderstood, they are portrayed as typists. The singers sing on the ramp, no different than in the old costume theater. Right at the beginning, the figure of the banco sings the question addressed to the witches: “Who are you?” Into the orchestra pit. The orchestra also wants to answer and say: “We are the musicians”, but then the conductor makes a new start and the musicians keep playing.

The singers are singers, spectacular singers, but they cannot transform the singing parts conceived a hundred and fifty years ago into figures of our present day.

Because the distance from experience to the historical work is not even discussed, the “modern” production is either primarily a bombastic design, or it is modern, especially in its gloomy lack of interest in the person - in both cases Livermore looks like a new D'Annunzio in directorial theater.