Macbeth - Educator Guide

Macbeth GIUSEPPE VERDI

EDUCATOR’S GUIDE: A COMPANION TO THE STUDENT GUIDE How to Use This Guide

What to Do When You Arrive

Your Role in Opera

Opera offers a unique teaching opportunity to explore the arts through many different disciplines, including music, literature, art, history, science, and math. This guide has been designed to provide educators with suggestions on how to integrate the music and historical background of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth into the existing curriculum.

Please use these Lesson Starters as a jumping off point for creative lesson planning in arts integration. The list of resources on the last page has been gathered to assist you. For applicable National Standards, please contact Washington National Opera’s Education and Community Programs Department at 202.448.3465 or at education@dc-opera.org.

The dress rehearsal of Macbeth will begin promptly at 7:00 p.m. The Kennedy Center Opera House doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Please plan to arrive early, as latecomers will be seated only at suitable breaks in the music, often not until intermission.

Seating at Washington National Opera’s dress rehearsals is not assigned. When you arrive, please have your passes ready to present to the ushers; they will direct you to the area of the Opera House where you will be seated. The running time for this rehearsal of Macbeth is approximately two hours and 30 minutes, including one intermission.

Opera is a collaborative art. It requires the work of many people, including the director, designers, singers, orchestra, crew, and audience. The audience is an important part of every performance. As an audience member, your role is to suspend disbelief and imagine that the story enacted before you is really happening, to let the action and music surround you, and to become part of the show. To help your students feel comfortable with their role as audience members, Washington National Opera has prepared some tips for performance etiquette. Please review At the Opera House (in the Student Guide) with your students.

Following these guidelines will help everyone have a positive experience!

Lesson Starters THE SETTING Visual/Performing Arts: Directors sometimes set operas in a different location or time period from which the opera was originally set. Watch a video of Macbeth either before or after your students attend the dress rehearsal. Compare and contrast the two productions.

Are they set in the same time period? Be sure to discuss visual elements such as set design, lighting, and costumes in addition to the musical and performance aspects. In what other places or time periods could this opera be set?

Visual Arts: Have students design what the production of the opera Macbeth would look like if they were the costume and/or set designer using sketches and a written description. What would the set look like?

What would the costumes look like? Would it be abstract to evoke a mood or would it be set in a specific location?

The Story Theater/Dance: The stories and characters in opera are sometimes complicated. Review the synopsis and characters with your students and have them depict the story through movement to better understand the main events of the opera.

Theater/Language Arts: Discuss or have students write about the differences between Shakespeare’s play and Verdi’s opera. Have students research Verdi’s process of turning the play into an opera to help them in their discussion.

History: Have students research the history of the real Macbeth and give a report on his family tree, in what part of Scotland he lived, and what his life might have been like.

Music/Language Arts: Take a specific passage of Shakespeare’s text of Macbeth and compare and contrast to Verdi’s opera. How does Verdi use music to make Shakespeare’s text come to life?

Theater/Creative Writing: Have students write a short paragraph about each of the characters. Be sure the students include physical descriptions of the characters as well as personality traits.

Music: If your class were writing a modern-day opera, what would the music sound like? Remember that composers of bel canto created “beautiful singing,” but also used catchy tunes based on music that was popular at the time. What would the subject matter be and how would the language (dialogue) be constructed? Keep in mind that going to the opera then was as common as going to the movies today.

Music/Language Arts: Compare, in a class discussion or an essay assignment, the “mad scene” of Lady Macbeth with Lucia’s “mad scene” in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. What differences can be found in the music and drama?

Opera Production Math: Ticket sales cover only 68% of the cost of putting on an opera. The rest of the money is collected through donations from generous individuals, corporations, foundations, and public sectors. Imagine it costs approximately $2,200,960 to produce Macbeth. Ask your students to figure out how much money must be raised to cover the cost beyond ticket sales. Discuss which individuals and corporations you might ask to donate the remainder of this money.

Language Arts/Marketing: Find examples of program notes from operas or other performances. Research the differences between advertising material and program notes. Outline program notes for Macbeth, including information on the composer, librettist, social and historical context of the piece, and the music. Continue your outline with interpretive information about the sets, costumes, setting/time period, etc. Remember, program notes are not long. From your outline, write a short article (one page) that will prepare the audience for the performance you researched.

Language Arts/Journalism: Have your students write a review of the performance of Macbeth. After the production opens, check local papers for reviews of Macbeth and have students compare and contrast these reviews to their own.

While writing the review, make sure students keep in mind these points: A review should tell a story.

It should be written in simple, uncomplicated language.

The purpose of the review is not to say simply whether the music was good or bad; a review articulates what the music was like both subjectively and objectively.

Be constructive, not persuasive or judgmental, in your review.

Avoid writing in the first person and in the passive tense.

Music Visual Art: Play a recording of Verdi’s Macbeth and have students sketch or paint representations of the emotions they feel while listening to the music.

Discuss how artists are often inspired to draw, paint, or sculpt works of art based on music.

Physics/Music: Opera consists of both orchestral and vocal music. Have students think about how the sounds are produced to create music.

Introduce them to the basic concept of sound waves and have them pick a musical instrument in the orchestra (or the voice) and research how that particular instrument produces sound waves of different pitches. Have each student present how the instrument they chose produces sound.

Music: In the Student Guide, it is mentioned that Verdi was very deliberate and specific with great attention to detail, regarding the composition of this opera and serving the playwright. Pick a section of the opera, perhaps an aria or duet, and discuss it with your students.

Analyze in what specific ways the music echoes or accompanies Shakespeare’s text for this section and the dramatic and emotional characteristics that both text and music evoke.

Music: Verdi deliberately used certain instruments, tempos and key signatures to evoke a dramatic mood and help convey the characters’ emotions.

Listen to excerpts from the opera and have students lead a discussion or write a paper about what characteristics in the music create what kind of mood or emotion.

Musical Highlights: Washington National Opera Commentaries on CDSM provide a comprehensive introduction to this opera, but if your schedule prohibits you from playing the entire CD, we suggest playing the following tracks for your students to highlight key moments in Macbeth.

Track 2: Act One: When shall we three meet again?

- The witch chorus Track 5: Lady Macbeth An introduction to this complex character Track 8: Duet: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth The Murder Duet: one of the most well known duets in the opera Track 9: The king’s body discovered; Act One finale - A turning point in the story Track 13: An interrupted banquet Lady Macbeth’s brindisi (drinking song) Track 21: Lady Macbeth: in the middle of the night - known as the sleepwalking aria and “mad scene”

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WASHINGTON NATIONAL OPERA EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY PROGRAMS ARE MADE POSSIBLE BY THE FOLLOWING FUNDERS:

Online: National Education Standards www.education-world.com/standards/national/

$50,000 and above Mr. and Mrs. John Pohanka

Opera America’s Online Course: Verdi’s Macbeth

$25,000 and above Friedman Billings Ramsey

Macbeth

$15,000 and above DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts John and Cora H. Davis Foundation $10,000 and above Clark-Winchcole Foundation Philip L. Graham Fund Jacob & Charlotte Lehrman Foundation The Honorable and Mrs. Jan M. Lodal Prince Charitable Trusts The Washington Post Company $5,000 and above Theodore H. Barth Foundation International Humanities $2,500 and above Mr. Walter Arnheim The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation Target The K.P. and Phoebe Tsolainos Foundation $1,000 and above Dr. and Mrs. Ricardo Ernst Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Professor Martin Ginsburg Horwitz Family Fund

Credits Writer: Rebecca Kirk Education and Community Programs Associate Graphic Design: Suzan L. Reed Suzan Reed Graphics

Resources

Editors: Michelle Krisel Director, Center for Education and Training Caryn Fraim Associate Director, Education and Community Programs Stephanie Wright Education and Community Programs Manager Hannah Grove-DeJarnett Communications Coordinator Catherine Zadoretzky Editorial Assistant

www.operaamerica.org/audiences/lifelong/ distancelearning/macbeth/index.html

www. library.thinkquest.org/2888/ www.dc-opera.org/ourseason/macbeth.asp www.portlandopera.org/2005/macbeth/ www.seattleopera.org/operas/2005-2006/macbeth/ www.operatoday.com/~/the_works_of_gi.php

Science of Sound www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/ russell/138/sec4/acoust1.htm www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/~/sound/soundtoc.html www.school-for-champions.com/science/sound.htm

Recordings: Audio RCA, 1959 (Erich Leinsdorf, with Leonard Warren, Leonie Rysanek, Jerome Hines, and Carlo Bergonzi.)

Deutsche Grammophon, 1976 (Claudio Abbado, with Piero Cappuccilli, Shirley Verrett, Nicolai Ghiaurov, and Plácido Domingo) EMI Classics, 1952 (Victor de Sabata with Maria Callas, Enzo Mscherini, Italo Tajo, and Gino Penno)

Video/DVD Opera d’Oro, 1998. (Sir John Pritchard with James Morris, Josephine Barstow, and Kostas Paskalis)

Books: Shakespeare Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers.

London: Methuen, 1987.

Kott, Jan. Shakespeare Our Contemporary.

New York: Norton, 1966.

Kliman, Bernice. Macbeth. Manchester: Manchester, 1992.

Muir, Kenneth. Introduction to Macbeth, by William Shakespeare. London: Methuen, 1984.

Shakespearean Criticism. Vols. 3, 20. Detroit: Gale Research, 1986

Verdi Berger, William. Verdi with a Vengeance.

New York: Random House, 2000.

Budden, Julian. The Operas of Verdi.

Vol. 1 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Hardcastle, Robert. Verdi and his Operas.

London: Omnibus Press, 1996.

Osborne, Charles. The Complete Operas of Verdi.

New York: Da Capo Press, 1969.

Rosselli, John. Life of Verdi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Bel Canto Ashbrook, William. The New Grove Masters of Italian Opera: Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini.

New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc., 1997.

Rosselli, John. Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Weaver, William. The Golden Century of Italian Opera from Rossini to Puccini. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1980.