Give Em What They Don't Want

Larry Lash (yes, honestly) in the March 2010 Opera News:

In several early Verdi works, there are passages where the music doesn't quite fit the action. Let's call it the oom-pah-pah factor. A notable example is the lilting march tune that accompanies Duncan's entrance in Macbeth. A director today can search for a dignified solution or give in to the sheer campiness of the situation. The latter was the approach chosen by Vera Nemirova for her production of Macbeth at Wiener Staatsoper (seen Dec. 7): the king and his kilted retinue pranced onstage in a silly dance that actually suited the music but not the dramatic situation. Booing erupted. Actually, booing began five minutes into the performance, when the witches were revealed to be a coven of society ladies in a blackened forest, gathered to observe performance-art involving nude women, slathered with paint, sliding on a large canvas.

Nemirova essentially played the opera for comedy. As there is much bouncy music in Macbeth (including the rarely performed ballet music), few characters escaped being given choreography of some sort. Add to this a chubby Duncan taking a bubble bath and flopping on the Macbeths' bed for a nap; Banquo's murderers in trench coats, white gloves and red clown noses carrying red helium balloons; blond bombshell Lady Macbeth entering with a baby stroller that concealed a machine gun; and those witches, back in the forest, clad in white bathrobes, hair wrapped in white towels, reenacting the murderous history of Scotland. The resulting incoherent cocktail of absurdity drew booing and yelling throughout the entire performance, at times obliterating the music or forcing conductor Guillermo Garcia Calvo to stop. It's a wonder that Nemirova and her design team weren't blown offstage by the booing and heckling that greeted their repeated curtain calls.

Disapproval wasn't reserved for the production team. Erika Sunnegårdh, making her debut as Lady Macbeth, was booed almost as harshly as Nemirova, and not just at her curtain call: after a less-than-satisfactory sleepwalking scene, she bungled the high D-flat badly. Save for a few loud notes on top, her inflexible voice sounded like that of a Soubrette, and not a very good one at that, despite a flabbergasting résumé that includes Turandot, Senta, the Fidelio Leonore and Abigaille.

Totally out of his depth, Stefan Kocan was booed as well for his off-pitch, lightweight Banquo. Conductor Calvo took a severe drubbing, too, for his lack of command and coordination between stage and pit. Dimitri Pittas, making his company debut as Macduff, got a hero's reception, but while his aria was sung impressively, his steely tone lacks Verdian warmth.

Overcoming all these odds, Simon Keenlyside scored an absolute triumph in the title role. His gorgeous lyric baritone is at its zenith, generous and positively glowing. He is a natural actor: it was fascinating to watch his Macbeth's gradual mental disintegration. In this farrago of a production, he never lost an ounce of dignity, but he did blow his cool when the Uzi-carrying pram refused to stay put: Keenlyside walked upstage and kicked it, dispatching it into the woods.