After our success with La Boheme, we decided to try for rush tickets to Macbeth at the Sydney Opera House. It was showing on a Tuesday night and luckily it was a VERY slow night at the Opera House. Normally when you buy standing room tickets, you expect to stand. But since about half of the upper deck was empty, we were able to sit in the balcony about 9 rows back. YEA!At intermission we moved down to row 3. We were surprised at how big of a difference the 6 rows made in the view and the sound...we felt so much closer even though the original seats were fabulous.
Bubble bubble toil and trouble...
For those of you who slept through high school English, Macbeth is Shakespeare's classic story of a power hungry man who becomes Scotland's king by the traditional means...regicide. The story includes his equally power hungry wife who goads him into the murder when he begins to lose his nerve. One killing leads to many many more. And how can a story be made better...yep...a coven of witches. The original play has just three, but this production had an entire coven divided into three groups. We knew nothing about the actual score, but Verdi's music was so much better than we expected. It helped the story progress and was interesting. It had some truly dramatic moments and flowed really well. No symphonically induced napping.
The voices were incredible. Lady Macbeth and Banquo were both outstanding. Although the leads had magnificent voices, the big stand out was, surprisingly, a more minor character, Macduff. His mellow voice was a high baritone or low tenor with a fabulous tone. He did not get much stage time, but he he stole every aria he sang and ended up getting a huge round of applause at the end. He actually seemed quite surprised by this.
Note that seeing the opera won't help anyone struggling with Shakespearean English because it is all sung in Italian.
It was a nice night out. Is that wrong to say that for a show all about murder?
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