Macbeth, opera review: not the Scottish play as we know it

The intentions of Styles and librettist/director Ted Huffman are presumably ironic in this flat production of Macbeth, says Barry Millington 
Different: Ted Huffman's adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth changes much of the original text
Robert Workman
Barry Millington10 September 2015

Based on Shakespeare it may be, but Luke Styles’s 75-minute chamber opera Macbeth (with text selected by Ted Huffman) is not the Scottish play as we know it. Axeing the witches — the better to focus on the human rather than the supernatural — is fair enough. And given the chamber forces, we can manage with only two guests at the banquet. Economy might have proved an advantage, but it’s difficult to feel much tightening of the dramatic screw.

As in Shakespeare’s time, the performers are all male, yet little is made of assigning the role of Lady Macbeth to a tenor: the line “unsex me here” isn’t even included. Indeed there’s little tension between the Macbeth pair at all, either moral or sexual. Her character is barely developed: she is not seen to egg him on, nor does she suffer guilt later — there’s no sleepwalking scene.

The intentions of Styles and librettist/director Huffman are presumably ironic. (Their notes in the programme are unfortunately illegible thanks to its perverse design.) Certainly the association of flute and harp with Lady Macbeth is counter-intuitive. So is some of the word-setting, which rises and falls according to mysterious laws. One assumes that the reassigning of Malcolm’s closing speech to Macbeth is also ironic — the coup de grace in this dubious deconstruction of Shakespeare’s play.

Duncan’s “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction”, scored for trumpet, trombone, cello and bass, is eloquently introspective and the chamber ensemble oscillates fluently between reflective and martial modes.

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Ed Ballard (Macbeth) and Aidan Coburn (Lady Macbeth) lead the cast drawn from soloists of the Glyndebourne chorus and their Jerwood Young Artists Programme.

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