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GIUSEPPE VERDI

MACBETH

SIGMUND FREUD

LADY MACBETH ON THE COUCH FROM: SOME CHARACTER TYPES MET WITH IN PSYCHO-ANALYTIC WORK – THOSE WRECKED BY SUCCESS. We may take as an example of a person who collapses on reaching success, af ter striving for it with single-minded en ergy, the figure of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. Beforehand there is no hesita tion, no sign of any internal conflict in her, no endeavour but that of overcom ing the scruples of her ambitious and yet

tender-minded husband. She is ready to sacrifice even her womanliness to her murderous intention, without reflecting on the decisive part which this woman liness must play when the question af terwards arises of preserving the aim of her ambition, which has been attained through a crime.

ACT 1 Scene 5 “Come, you spirits, That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.” “ ... to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers!”

ACT 1 Scene 7 “I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.”

KS ANNA NETREBKO as LADY MACBETH

ANDREAS LÁNG

BETWEEN TRASHY HORROR AND CONCRETE BUNKER THE VIENNA STATE OPERA’S CHEQUERED RESPONSE TO MACBETH

Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth didn’t have an easy time in Vienna. The start was bungled, the planned première in April 1848 at the Kärtnertor Theater came to nothing. The revolution and its con sequences, and the dislike by parts of the Viennese population of the annual Italian guest performances that were standard at the time were not a suit able platform for the latest work by the master from Busseto. The paradoxical result was that the performance of an opera by a composer who was a declared supporter of the revolution only became possible after the uprisings had been put down. The première took place belatedly at the Kärtnertor Theater on 11 December 1849. The conditions were something else! The Italian singers in 1848 were not available, and the German-speak ing replacements were unable to cope with the demands of their parts. This was partly because they clearly were not at home in the music of the opera, and partly because they were miscast. The baritone role of Macbeth was given to the bass Joseph Staudigl, and

the bass role of Banco was given to the baritone Gustav Hölzel, while Anna Maria Wilhelmine van Hasselt-Barth lacked the necessary vocal volume for Lady Macbeth. The theatre’s funds had been depleted by the unstable po litical situation, which also forced a stage setting that hardly deserved to be called such. Even so, for most critics the person responsible for all this was the composer. “Verdi has first verdified Victor Hugo, then Schiller, and now Shakespeare. Music should not be mis used like this,” was the Humorist’s take, two days after the première. Doyen of the critics Eduard Hanslick joined in. “It is a shame and an outrage, the way that Verdi treats the dramas of Shakespeare and Schiller.” But Hanslick was a well-known fertile source of mis judgements, which have not signifi cantly affected the course of musical history. In the case of Macbeth, he was again out of step with the audiences, who attended 22 performances in the next three years, six of them even in Italian. While not a lot, it is still a fair number in the situation at that time.

BETWEEN TRASHY HORROR AND CONCRETE BUNKER

However, this was followed by a long break, lasting eight decades, in which Macbeth was virtually ignored in Vienna, like other Verdi operas that were subsequently popular in Austria. There were various reasons for this. The Ricordi publishing house followed a marketing strategy of blackmail – if Vienna wanted a work by Verdi, it had to buy and perform a work by an un known composer – and regularly coun tered the ambitions of the Vienna State Opera to put a Macbeth, Don Carlo or Forza del destino on its schedule (even Aïda was only established in the reper toire by tricks and skilful intrigues on the part of the management). But there was also opposition from a powerful anti-Verdi movement. Anything not clearly influenced by Richard Wagner was regarded as unacceptable, and in any case banal, sparing any effort to perceive the unusually gripping drama behind the so-called “barrel organ mu sic”, and there was a general feeling of superiority over the Romance artist. Woe betide any Italian or French com poser who mistakenly chose material in German or English as a basis for their own opera. As late as 1945 Richard Strauss wrote in his artistic legacy to Karl Böhm: “I condemn Verdi’s Otello in its entirety, like all libretti based on clas sic dramas misshapen into opera texts … [a formulation every bit as unhappy as the thought it was intended to ex press!] They do not belong on the Ger man stage.” While Strauss’s rejection of any competition reducing his own royalties needs no further explanation, the uninformed prejudice of countless opera house directors who presented artistic trifles – at the Vienna State Opera, for example, pieces like Max von

Oberleitner’s Aphrodite, Raoul Mader’s Die Flüchtlinge, Antonio Smareglia’s Der Vasall von Szigeth or Carl Pfeffer’s Harold – while ignoring Verdi’s works of genius is simply astounding. Even the celebrations in 1913 to mark the cente nary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth failed to turn the trend around. The situation only changed with the appearance of Franz Werfel’s bestseller Verdi: a novel of the opera in 1924. Sud denly, the Italian composer, who Wer fel portrayed as intensively and scru pulously struggling for artistic truth in music, was on everyone’s lips. With his novel, Werfel succeeded in dispelling many prejudices against Verdi and reha bilitating his artistic power. In addition, Werfel produced high-quality transla tions and new versions of several Verdi libretti, and translated and published letters of the composer, creating the basis for a genuine Verdi comeback. In Vienna there were also the efforts of the director-conductors Franz Schalk and Clemens Krauss who – like Fritz Busch in Germany – worked actively a redis covery or fresh discovery of Verdi. In terms of premières, this resulted in 1930, a new production of Simon Boccanegra (after the piece had not been performed for 47 years), 1931, a new pro duction of La traviata, 1932, a première of Don Carlo and new productions of Aïda, Un ballo in maschera and Rigoletto, 1933, a première of Macbeth, 1934, a new production of Falstaff. On 11 May 1932 Julius Korngold summed up: “there will be well-nigh no forgotten Verdi opera. A triumph by the genius – and the de feat of a sterile present.” Around a year later, Korngold followed this on the occasion of the Macbeth première with these words: “It is astounding in all the circumstances what unexpected power

EDGAR ALLEN POE

THE RAVEN Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore – While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “ Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door – Only this and nothing more.” Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore – For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore – Nameless here for evermore. And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating “ ’Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door – Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door; – This it is and nothing more.” Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, “Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you” – here I opened wide the door; – Darkness there and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?” This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” – Merely this and nothing more. LUCA SALSI as MACBETH