Krysztof Warlikowski’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth; recorded for video at Salzburg in 2023 is certainly not short of ideas. Whether it all hangs together is another matter. There seem to be two main ideas in play. We are in a 1940s-ish fascist state with party armbands and so on. This gets more explicit as the piece develops. On top of this there’s a foregrounding of Lady Macbeth as the real driving force of the drama coupled with the idea that what’s driving her is her inability to provide an heir. For example, she’s clearly the one being crowned after Duncan’s murder and babies are a recurrent visual motif.
operaramblings 