The lady vanquishes

At last, a great time at the Royal Opera: a magnificent performance, in every way, of Verdi’s Macbeth, curiously but pleasantly beginning at 3 p.m. This is the fourth outing of Phyllida Lloyd’s 2002 production, and the finest by a long way, though each of the previous series had its merits.

If my memory serves me rightly, and it very likely doesn’t, Daniel Dooner, the revival director, has made significant changes to the production. What previously struck me as tolerable seemed, in this revival, thoughtful, imaginative and genuinely helpful to the drama, qualities that I had given up hope of experiencing in a major opera house. Oddly, that meant that the striking unevenness of this opera became more evident, with the blame to be laid firmly at the composer’s door. Still, up to the interval, which came after Act Two, enjoyment is unalloyed. There is the tense Overture, one of those in which Verdi doesn’t bother to join the themes, merely lays them side by side. Then come the jovially sinister witches, in black with red turbans, and the powerful drama immediately gets under way, sweeping along to the murder of Duncan, the assorted reactions to it, and through to the great banqueting scene and the ghost of Banquo.

All this is far greater than anything Verdi had achieved before or would again for some time, and it is realised at the Royal Opera virtually perfectly. Verdi famously said that he wanted ‘the Lady’, as he called her, to be almost voiceless, hardly to sing at all, and so on. If he really meant that he would have been shocked by Anna Netrebko, for she gave one of the most stunning vocal performances heard in this theatre for many years.