Macbeth, rearranged, twice.
The centerpiece of the classical music portion of this year's festival is the 20-performance residency of the Kirov Opera at the Met. Giuseppe Verdi's MacBeth, originally premiered in 1847, is one of five productions to be staged by the opera during their three-week stay in New York, and is the only non-Russian work in the repertoire. But MacBeth is in many ways the black sheep of Verdi's oeuvre. The story itself has nothing of the heartbreaking love stories of his other warhorses, and Lady MacBeth would probably be capable of eating Violetta, Leonora or Aida for dinner. In fact, Verdi's vision for the role of one of the greatest female villains of all time was that the singer should possess a distorted tone quality, and he often complained about singers approaching it too precisely. But the loveless story is not without drama, and Verdi plugs in his characteristic lushness and penchant for over-the-top emotionality. The dark pitch of the plotline and musical language is a suitable fit for the Kirov, which under the direction of maestro Valery Gergiev champions the musically violent strains and politically motivated operas upon which Russian opera is founded.
Meanwhile, heading west a few avenue blocks, the strains of a second MacBeth opera can be heard. This one, by the Sicilian-born composer Salvatore Sciarrino, received its premiere last year at Germany's Schwetzingen Festival. For Sciarrino, this daring retelling of Shakespeare's tale has been in the works since 1976 and was finally able to transpire to its final form as the severe limitations of modernism dissolved through the 1980s and 90s. Sciarrino's musical language, while subscribing to the new school of complexity, has a distinctively human quality to it, incorporating the anatomical sounds of breathing, pulsing and heartbeats. His style is an enigmatic combination of rigid geometric systems and poetic impressionism. He coaxes sounds out of instruments (including the human voice) that are at once brilliantly innovative and wholly disconcerting. His subtle polyphonic gestures often come without a fixed tempo marking, and there is usually very little stylistic instruction, imbuing the textures with a natural edginess.
Whereas Verdi's attempt to set MacBeth led him to obsess over the particulars of the text, Sciarrino was more interested in making sure the themes of betrayal, political conspiracy, murder, human failings and supernatural powers are at the forefront. Scenes of plotting and assassination are coupled with music that, while aspiring toward the same darkly dramatic goals as Verdi's, rings the complete esthetic opposite. German director Achim Freyer's surreal, distorted visual world complements Sciarrino's musical palette, which ranges from spooky to outright terrifying.
Critics who attended the premiere last year raved that it could be Sciarrino's most fully realized stage work to date (his other operatic works include another "remake," Lohengrin, and Luci mie traditrici). But that is not to say that the blackness of the production didn't instill terror in them. In fact, many favorably described sitting through the work as being unbearable, a testament to Sciarrino's masterful manipulation of sound and sensation. Sciarrino, who wallows in the mysterious emotional underpinnings of musical intricacy, spares no one with his bleak elucidation of Western culture's most famous ghost story.