Supernatural stagehands in a new ‘Macbeth’ from BLO

Theater Review

October 30, 2011|By Harlow Robinson, Globe Correspondent

Don’t expect to see any kilts or bagpipes in the Boston Lyric Opera production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Macbeth’’ when it opens a five-performance run at the Citi Performing Arts Center Shubert Theatre on Friday. Not surprisingly, visiting director David Schweizer, still a noted theatrical enfant terrible after 40 years in the business, has something more provocative in mind.

This “Macbeth’’ has “a timeless contemporary feeling,’’ he remarked in a recent phone interview during rehearsals. “It looks like something happening in the mid-20th century or right now, not sometime long ago.’’

And not in Scotland, either.

The set, designed by BLO’s John Conklin, features not heaths, moats, and castles but a raked metallic platform projecting “a deserted industrial feeling.’’ And how about the famous chorus of witches who open the action and reappear throughout to foretell disaster and mayhem for Macbeth and his cursed country? Here, they are actually running the show, like supernatural stagehands controlling the murderous actions of the principal characters.

“What’s going on with the witches is always the big question,’’ said Schweizer, who is directing Verdi’s opera for the first time, but has several times staged the tragedy by William Shakespeare upon which it is based. “Shakespeare has three witches, but Verdi has three choruses of witches. We have taken his idea even further, to incorporate all the members of the chorus and everyone else onstage except Macbeth’s immediate entourage into the witches’ chorus. They play all the incidental roles - messengers, soldiers, refugees - without costume changes. The idea is that the witches are putting on a spectacle for themselves, a sort of laboratory experimenting with the darkest extremes of human behavior. They play with the Macbeths, putting them through their paces.’’

Schweizer’s concept coincides with Verdi’s: “Abide by the rule that the main roles of this opera are, and can only be, three: Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the chorus of witches,’’ he wrote in a letter to publisher Leon Escudier. “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.’’

This is the second time Schweizer has worked at BLO. Last season, he mounted an acclaimed production of Viktor Ullmann’s “The Emperor of Atlantis, or Death Quits.’’ Schweizer has directed at major opera companies around the country, including the Glimmerglass Festival, where David Angus, BLO’s music director, currently serves as music director. Angus will also be at the podium for “Macbeth.’’