Elsewhere
Elsewhere
✭✭✭✭✩
by Giuseppe Verdi, directed by Robert Carsen
Oper Köln, Opernhaus
February 16-24, 2003
Toronto-born director Robert Carsen has become one of the foremost directors of opera in Europe. Oper Köln's revival of his brilliant 1998 staging of Verdi's Macbeth showed why. It was the most penetrating and inventive production of the opera (or indeed of the play) this reviewer has seen.
Not for Carsen the foolishness of the witches controlling the action. Rather, he focusses on political not supernatural power and thereby places the characters' fates in their own hands. The witches become cleaning women in an unnamed East European country whose power of "divination" derives solely from having observed so many violent political coups. We first meet them cleaning blood stains from recent firing squad victims. The cauldron of Act 3 becomes a large dustbin into which they scrape leftovers from Macbeth disastrous banquet. Their "conjuring" thus becomes a comment on the excesses of the ruling class. The state welcomes for Duncan, Macbeth and Malcolm are the same, all staged political rallies. During "Patria oppressa!" the chorus holds up photos of friends and relatives who have "disappeared". The work becomes a tragedy not just for Macbeth and his wife, tortured by their private visions, but for the people whose will is never represented.
Irish baritone Bruno Caproni in fine voice brought great understanding and nuance to the title role. English bass Peter Rose proved a crowd favourite as Banco. In contrast, Russian soprano Elena Zelenskaya sang powerfully as Lady Macbeth but with little subtlety. English conductor Martin André gave a thrilling account of the score.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Opera Canada 2003-06-22.
Photo: The chorus of Witches. ©2012 Frank Straub.
2003-02-17
Cologne, GER: Macbeth