These alterations should be assessed in the light of Verdi's reading of the Making 'Macbeth' :Musicabik

Shakespearean text. -
I. In the 1847 version Lady Macbeth's short aria was a cry of triumph upon Harold Powers.
having convinced her husband to diminate Banquo; the new extended version
suggested by Verdi and discussed in great detail with Piave (letters of 1. Verdi and Shakespeare
December 1864) strikes a new soberer note, by borrowing from Macbeth's In a memorial essay on Verdi published in 1901,,George Bernard Shaw, that
meditation on the planned murder, 'Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful most literate of opera-lovers, quipped:
~---~ .
2. The changes in the Apparitions' scene are essentially of a musical nature, the truth is that instead of Otelw being an Italian opera in the style of
intended to link it up with the new witches' 'ballet to be inserted immediately Shakespear, Othello is a play written by Shakespear in the style of an
before it. Italian opera .... With such a libretto Verdi was quite at hOme: his
3. This is the most interesting of thi: textual as well as musical changes. success with it proves, not that he could occupy Shakespear's plane but
Macbeth's aria at the clQse of the Apparitions' scene, modelled on his that Shakespeai could on occasion occupy his, which is a very different
monolo'gue at the end of the equivalent scene in Shakespeare - when he matter. 1
seems reduced to the status ofa conventional bloody stage tyrant- is replaced What Sh.aw wrote about Shakespeare's Othelw and Verdi's O_telw is true ofa_ll
by a recitative and duetto with Lady Macbeth. Their double involvement in the plays Verdi and his librettists ~ade into operas.. Verdi wanted for ~IS
the new murder plan suggests that both are possessed by the powers of evil, _musical theatre not a drama for which he would proV1de background muSic,
and is a most effective prelude to the sleep-walking scene. Significantly Verdi 'but a play that could be made, to use his own ~xpression! mu~icabile.
insisted to Piave (letter of December 1864) that in writing the text of the Of Verdi's twenty-four operas from Nabuccc m 1842, his third opera and
duetto he should 'use the thought and even the very words ofShakespeare'; he first overwhehuing success, through to his final triumph in 1893 with Falstaff,
did not know that the words he wanted preserved were·in fact an arbitrary •nineteen are based on spoken plays of non-Italian origin. The playwrights
intrusion by Shakespeare's Italian translator Carlo Rusconi. represented more than once in the Verdian can6n are Yictor Hugo,
4. The music of the openin'"g chorus of Act Four was completely rewritten, Shakespeare, Schiller and Antonio Garcia Gutierrez. Ifone were also to tak~
though the text remained unchanged; the new musical version anticipates the into account plays that Verdi is known to have had in mind but in the end
replacement of the last scene of the opera. never made into operas, then Hugo, and above all Shakespe~ wo~ld loom
5. Both iext and music of the last scene were radically changed. Verdi's own even larger. In addition to the Macbeth, Otelw, and Folstaff that Verd1 actually
careful new wording ofthe whole is witnessed by the letter to J.>iave ofJanuary composed, there is first and foremost Jfing Lear, whose co~pleted libretto _by
28, 1865. The earlier version included a dying speech for Macbeth which is Antonio Somma is among Verdi's papers at the family estate of VIlla
utterly unShakespearean in spirit. In the new version, as in Shakespeare, "Sant'Agata.' There are two other completed Shakespearean libretto~ at
Macbeth dies offstage; the final hymn of victory by a multiple chorus is the Sant'Agata. One is a fully versified libretto ofLa tem_pesta by Andrea !"'nmz~
perfect musical counterpart of Macduffs and Malcolm's closing speeches in copied out in Verdi's hand, dated 1866. The other IS a prose drafi hbretto 111
the play. Even Verdi's apparently arbitrary inclusion at this point of a chorus French called Rowena that turns out to be based on Cymbeline. Hamlet appears
ofBards (he carefully explains to Piave: 'The Bards, as you know, followed the in a list ofpossible subjects probably drawn up by Verdi in 1849 but when the
armies in those days') contributes to the Shakespearean note of celebration, ,subject was actually proposed to him, by Giulio Carcano in 1850, .he
recalling the chorUs of refugees at the beginning ofthe Act, and containirlg an ,demurred.
implicit homage to the English Bard who first devised the tragedy. So Verdi clearly regarded Shakespeare as a playwright who wa~ very
Shakespeare gave Verdi a fresh insight into.the nature of drama for music. musicabile indeed. But we must remember not only that an Italian opera based
For this reason Macbeth is so different from all he wrote before and after 1847. ~n Shakespeare is not a Shakespeare play in Italian with incideptal music; we
He acknowledged it some thirty years later, when, interviewed by the Vienna must also remember th~t the Shake~peare Verdi knew is not the Shakespeare
N.eue Freie Presse Gune 1875) on Richard Wagner's achievement, he we know. Shakespeare's language ~me to Verdi~ a11d 'to his Hbrettists, not ~
commented: ~I too have attempted the fusion ofmusic and drama, and I did so English but through Italian and French tra,nslauons, some m prose! some .m
in Macbeth; but I could not write my own librettos, as Wagner does.' His verse, some good, some bad. Verdi's knowledge of Macb~th at the tmle of 1t~
comment is only partly accurate, sincC on no other occasion had Verdi composition for instance, was through the prose translauon ofCarlo Ruscom
contributed so much to the writing of his own libretto - few words but (Padua 183S). And furthermore, Shakespeare's dramas came to ':erdi
significant, the essence of Shakespeare's music. .embedded in a Continental critical tradition rather different from the Bnnsh
'one: not Thomas Rymer or Samuel Johnson, let alone A. C. Bradley or T.S.
Eliot but rather Schlegel and Fran<;ois-Victor Hugo. Verdi's Shakespeare was
the rillying point ofContinental Romanticism (the English critic ~ost nea~ly
II relevant would be Coleridge). The contrast of grotesque and tragic to which
.~I Hugo constantly returned in the prefilces to his seminal plays ofthe 1830s was
embOdied for him in Shakespeare, whom he regularly cned as the anutheSis of
"
the classical unities of the grand siecle, the classical monotony of affect and
effect.
12
13
--------------------~-------------------- 1

We ought not, then, to compare Verdi directJy with Shakespeare as we know

him. We need to be able to see the play as Verdi saw it, as a nineteenth-century
man of the Italian musical theatre saw it, a man who happened to be a great
dramatist in his own right, but in a different medium, at a different time, and
in a different place. Properly to understand the relationship between Verdi
and Shakespeare, we need to be familiar above all with the process of
mediation, the way a Shakespeare play becomes a Verdi opera, the way it gets
made musicabile.
For a play to be musicabile, three things were necessary: a palpable
ambience, striking characters and, above all, strong situations. Verdi's
correspOndence with his librettists shows that he chose plays to make into
operas because of their potential, in these three domains, for effective music.
Once a play had been chosen, the opera was hammered out, in terms ofits plot
structure, its poetry, and its music. Pierluigi Petrobelli has summarised the
relationships in terms of
the interaction of the three main systems - dramatic action, verbal
organisation, and music ...
pointing out that
the articulation of the musical language is already present in the
organisation of the libretto. In other words, the verbal structure is
determined by the musical structure, and is governed by dramatic
principles. 3
Petrobelli's 'three main systems - dramatic action, verbal organisation, and
music' - should be examined two by two rather than one at a time, for the
dominant mode ofinteraction in each of the three possible pairings highlights
a different structural plane - background, middleground, and foreground -
within the synthesis of the completed opera.
Action is correlated with music on the background plane offormallayout, in
a synopsis of the play organised according to the nature and order of large
musical numbers: introductions, aria scenes, duet scenes, finales, and so on.
The synopsis might be made by librettist, composer, or both, or even by or
with the collaboration of some third party. It was in principle a joint effort, in
which all parties had to concur in trying to reach a particular public, though
Verdi's was the determining voice. For such a synopsis the terms schizzo, selva,
or programma were used. Though no such synopsis for Macbeth is known to
have survived, from Verdi's letters to Piave of September 4 and 22, 1846,
and from another to Tito Ricordi of Aprilll, 1857, it is known that one was
made, and that tt was exactly like others known from the period, such as those
for Ernani, II trovatore, and Simon Boccanegra. Verdi told Ricordi that
I wrote out the whole drama in prose, with divisions into acts, scenes,
numbers, etc. etc., then I gave it to Piave to put into verse. 4
Once the dramatic action has been blocked out in terms of musical numbers,
the libretto is organised by the selection and ordering of verse types and of
stanza designs within each number, again according to the type of music
expected. This is primarily the poet's task, though Verdi often requested a
particular metre or even suggested lines and stanzas that became part of the
Vera Schwarz as Lady Macbeth at Gl d bo
Debenham) yn e urne, l938. (Photo: GlyndebourneArchive;Jeremy final text.
The foreground is the musical setting ofthe text itself: specific rhythms and
forms, melodies, harmonies, accompaniment figures and instrumental

14 15
 Rehearsal of Carl Eben's 1938 Glyndebourne production, designed by Caspar Neher. (Photo;
Glyndehourne Archive/Jeremy Dehenham)

timbres are correlated in detail with specific metres and stanza distribution,
with meanings ofindividual words and moods conveyed in particular phrases,
entrances and exits, atmosphere called for in stage directions, and so on. This
was composer's business; even so, two of Verdi's poets with independent
experience in the musical theatre, Salvadore Cammarano and Arrigo Boito,
felt free to make sometimes quite detailed musical suggestions, some ofwhich
Verdi followed, and some nor.
The ambience and characterisations in Shakespeare were certainly
musicahile, but most musicahile ofall were the strong situations, the contrasti. As
Daniela Goldin has pointed out, for Verdi

the point of departure is the posiz£oni, the dramatic situations, on the

basis ofwhose initial selection (the scenes) he organized the characters,
eliminating those that do not come into the play ofcontrasti and that are
not agents or catalysts. From this it folJows that the Verdian characters,
at least in this case, function not so much as personalities, self-sufficient
psychological entities, but rather as events, actor-agents in situations;
and it is the situations, not the characters, that determine the
oppositions so characteristic ofVerdian dramaturgy: Macbeth versus
Banquo, Macbeth versus Lady Macbeth; but also Banquo in Act One
versus Banquo in Act Two, Lady Macbeth in Act One versus Lady
Macbeth in Act Four; while Macbeth, always a prey to external stimuli,
is the very symbol ofhuman contradiction, contraposed to himselffrom
one scene to another. 5

This is the most significant distinction between Verdi and Shakespeare. In

Shakespeare's Macbeth, as in his Othello, it is the deterioration of the principal Marghen"ta Grandi as Lady Macbeth, Glyndebourne, 1939. (Photo: Glyndebourne Archive)
character that drives the play; in the operas, striking situations in the drama
[II
16
17
 become visible and verbal pretexts for striking musical pieces.
Macbeth has an ambience that is palpable indeed. In the 1840s Italian operas
were s~ll thought. of m terms of genres, though not in the fumiliar dichotomy
of trag.c and com1c. There was the biblical genre, exemplified in Verdi by his
i first great succe~s Nabu.cco; there was the historical genre, as seen in his next
I opera I Lomkardt al_la_Pnma crociata; there were the grand, the passionate, even
the bourgems-reahsuc gt;nres, though this was in the future for Italian serious
I opera, in Verdi's Stiffelw (Trieste 1B:49) and La tra'lliata (Venice 1853). Macbeth

I
belongs to the'!enerefantasttco. Verd1 was very particular about the stage effects
for t_he fa~tastlc scenes, a~ve all for the three apparitions and the procession
of e1ght kings correspondmg with Shakespeare's Act Four scene 1.
I
I
There a.~ also s~g ch~racters in Macbeth. For the most part, they evoke
II types familiar to ltahan audtences of the time. There is a murderous baritone
- but Macbeth is a murderous baritone who vacillates, expresses remorse
even as he d~es the deed, ~rave and ~orous by turns, a study in dramatic
contrasts easlly made mustcal. There IS a pn'ma donna who can sing in the
bravura sty!~ - but Lady Macbeth, like Abigaille in Nabucco, is obsessed with
power; she ts ru~ess. as Lucrezia Borgia in Hugo's play and Donizetti's
opera; yet she fim~hes m ~stat.~ of altered consciousness, like poor, mad Lucy
of I:ar:a;mermoor m Doruzetn s opera, walking in her sleep like Amina in
Belhru s La sonn~mbul~. ~d above all, there are the witches, who collectively
' I
constitute ~he thir~ pnnapal ~hara~ter in Verdi's conception. On Feberuary 8, Glyndebourne at the Edinburgh Festival in 1947 with Owen Brannigan as Banquo and George
1865, Verdi wrote m connecnon With the revision ofMacbeth made for Paris Christie as Fleance. (Piwtc: Glyndeboume Archive/Angoa McBean)
dhat '
music, bn.ndisi, and interruptions - serves to prepare fOr a majestic pezzo
the roles in this opera are three and no more than three: Lady Macbeth, concertato halting the action in the traditional manner to conclude a
Macbeth, and the Chorus of the witches. The witches dominate the spectacular Finale.
'I
' II
dra~a; everything de:iv~s from dhem; coarse and gossipy in the first act,
subhme and prophetic m the third. They are truly a character and a
character of the highest importance. • '
2. Design for a murder
In the autograph of the 1847 version, the opera is divided into sixteen
Macbeth has strong situations, whose conlrasti could be used as dramatic numbers, numbered 1 to 15, with 81' coming between No. 8 and No. 9. The
underpinning for effective, even violent, musical contrasts. Those contrasts, manuscript copy in Paris widh Verdi's autograph replacements and emenda-
I
though, are alw~ys bound .together within the sturdy dramaturgical tions for the 1865 version is divided the same way. The many 1865 foreground
dll frameworks ofltalian Romantic opera, frameworks of convention that Verdi changes range from derails of harmonisation and instrumentation to
•, often m~dified, ~istorte.d, even aborted, but never abandoned; they were, after recomposition of substantial frag.nents as in No. 9 (the Act Two Finale),
I all,. dh~ link to hts P?blic, and manipulating audience expectations (either by where Macbeth's reactions to Banquo's ghost were replaced. In 1865 on the
sanstymg o~ surpnsmg them) was his surest way to success. Some ofdhe most middleground plane a few movements, while retaining their original musico-
powerful Situations have been mentioned. The scene where the witches dramatic functions within dhe number (and a fortWri within dhe sequence of
mediate a confrontation of M~cbeth and the three apparitions naturally numbers), were given new music and sometimes new text too: the set piece
suggested a further famthar mustco-dramatic topos dhat Frits Noske has called after the opening scena in No. 7, Lady Macbeth's free-s1anding cabaktta
~e 'ritu~ sc;ne', in which .everything happens ;hree times, each time at a 'Trionfai!', was replaced by the extraordinary aria 'La luce langue'. No. 12, the
chorus of Scottish refugees that opens Act Four, has the same words but new
~gher ptt~h. 'f?.~re are several overlays to its threefold structure, especially
I! I m the. Pans reVlsmn. of 1865, but the Shakespearean trinity of witches and music. Most radically, the last halfofNo. 15 was replaced: the music from the
appannons was obviOusly musicabile. report of Lady Macbeth's death was recomposed and, instead of ending the
In the Banquet Scene, Shakespeare's Act Three scene 4 there are a:mtrasti opera with Macbeth's death song, Macbeth was killed offstage and the opera
between the festivities on. the one hand, and Macbeth's re~ction to Banquo'~ was ended with a chorus of bards and general Hymn of Victory.
gh?st.on the other. Mus1cally.this situation takes the form of a brindisi (a The background plane, however - the relationship and the ordering of
drinking song)- another familiar kind of number- prefuced by dialogue of Verdi's musical numbers to Shakespeare's plot- is the same in bodh versions.
hosts a~d g_uesr~ over 'party music' in the vein later exploited for the Table I shows how the sequence in Rusconi's translation ofShakespeare's Act
lntrot}uzwne m Rrgoletto and La traviata. Here the final cadence of the party One scene 5 to Act Two scene 3 was refashioned to make four musical numbers
mustc after the first stanza of the brindisi, and the final cadence of rhe second for the murder scene in Verdi's Act One. A schtZzo would be dhe same in either
stanza ofdhebrindisi itself, are each brutally pushed aside by music ofthegenere version, with different descriptive language only needed occasionally within
fantastico, for Macbeth's reaction to Banquo's ghost. And all this - pany numbers.

18 19
 Table I Table Ii
A 'sehizzo' as Piave and Verdi might have devised it Generic evnectations
-r
in Italian
' •
Romantic ~melodran:lrn,t'
~

A 'schizzo' for the musical numbers iU the second set ofAct One, i.e. 'Antechamber in Grand, Duet Aria/Cavatina Cqntral Finale
Macbeth's castle, leading to rooins beyond'. 'SH' stands for the Shakespearean sources
and'+' in No.6 indicates there is material with no Shakespearean warrant. [0] Scena Scena chorus, ballet, scena, aria,
duet, etc.
No. 3. Cavatina lAdy Macbeth (SH !.5) Lady Macbeth reads a letter from Macbeth, is
overjoyed· at the prospect of the throne, but fears Macbeth may not be sufficiently
' Tpnp. d'attacco
[)j stanzas Tempo d'attacco [kinetic]
dialogue
strong-willed for the necessary evil-doing. A servant announces the imminent
arrival of the King (accompanied by Macbeth), who will stay the night. Lady [~lAdapo/cantabile/Siow movement Adagio P~o roncertato [static]
Macbeth invokes infernal aid to suppon her murderous designs. [3]•Temp. di mezzo, Tethpo- di mezzo Tempo di Mezzo [kinetic]
No. 4. Redtatiw (SH 1.5, 7) e marcia (c£ SH 1.6) Macbeth arrives, and l.ady Macbeth [~] Cabaletta/Stretta Cabdletta Stretta [static]
urges him on to do murder. A rustic march, approaching ever closer, announces the
arrival of King Duncan. Accompanied by Banquo, Macduff, Malcohn, Macbeth,
Lady Macbeth, and train, the King enters, crosses, and leaves, as the march dies The major distinctio~ within, a mus'i~al number is between the scena and the re~t: .th~
away. rff$'
seena i.S. writi'en in 'IJefsi sciolti (loose Verse),' the fest in 'IJeTS~ tirici (l,yric Verse). fCWltt
No.5. &ena e duetto (SH II.!, line 31-end, II.2, 1.7) Macbeth imagines a dagger leading are h~rmallY unrhym~d and enjambed;,..they ru:,e the Italian eqmv~lent p~?lank_ vc:rs~·
thou_gh two standard li~e lengths'ar~ u'sed'rathrr ~an one. ~g speeches m v~z scwlu,
him on, sees the night world as filled with evil, hears a bel~ resolves to murder the
hOwever, frequendy end with a rhyming couplet, hke Shakespearean spf!e~hes ~~blank_
King, goes, to do so. Lady Macbeth, entering, hears' an owl, then Macbeth's voice
vefse· with some librettists, though hardly ever Piave, rhymes occur sporad1cally m 'li~Z
within. Macbeth reenters: _the murder is done. He is horrified by his deed; she mocks
·It! A scena delineates·"the context' out., of which movements of alternat1~g
his fears. He wiU not takt' the bloody dagger back in to incriminate the guards; she
takes'"it, goes off to dO so. He hears lillocking at the t:astle gate: She 'reenters, urges
=~~nitation a:nd reflectioDI grow. ~The expected musical te?'JUre for scentl verse 1s
him to' leave before they are discovered, and cdntinubl to mock his fears; he is still recitative: the words are declaimed IJlClodically, more or less.m the rhyth!,ll, of s~ch
horrified by what he has done. rathe~ than ~in strict musicftJ time,,.inte,rmi1;tenJly.. punctuated,_ or accompamed~by ,the
orCbe,stra. • . • .' · · h ed
No._ 6. F£11ale I (SH ll.3, lines 46-89, t)Macduffand Banquo eDter. Macduffgoes to wake Silbsequent inovements Will be in 'IJersi linci, whtch are hnes mo.~~ metr~, r ym ,
·me King; Banquo expresses his foreboding. Macduffrenirns in hOrror.-Banquo and normal1y"not enjaffibed. Ven,/lirici6are grOuped into. sta,nzas ~y rliyme pattern. Jn
goes to see for himself while Macduff rouses the castle; all come on stage. Banquo kinetiC movenlen'ts the lines are broken ?P bu\ th,e statt~ mov~me?ts. have sta?~as of
returns, announces that the King has been murdered. There is general consternation unifonn siie,•evenly'distribuf:ed among the characters.·:rtte. muS1c 1~ bo~h kmds of
and invocation of supernatural wrath upon the unknowh--assassin. movemc!Ot ptoceeds in strict time- tetfipo gid'sto- but•m d1fferenfkmds.~te~rural
relationship b'C:tween voice and orchestra. In kinetic mo~ements, the .melody lies m the
orchestra with the vocal lines superimposedreither lyncally,,.do~bhng t~e orchestral
That the number ofcharacters increases aS the sequence progresses fulfils a melody, or~declaiming. s In statiC$ movemenJs, it is .tl)e voice;_ o; votces whtch carry tqe
fundamental gen·eric expectation in Italian opera. The first Act w'ould begin musical continuity while the orche~tra accompames. . . 1
•

Kinetic JilOV,ements piepare· static movements by Iea~mg up to ':f revelatmn,

with an Introduzione. In"tl1e'second scetle ofth&fifst Act the prima dohila
wouli:l have an entrance..aria, called cavatina; to be followed by the
enttance of
co'nfronta~iori or" event that turns ,th~.actorS)nto a ta?l~u. Ideallr a smgl: wo~~ or
phqlse, ap~rqla scenica, ·~tpts the sc.ene' .9 One~ IP7 actton ltas been sculpted , a formal
a.second'principal~for a "Grand Duet; inore cliarac!ers }'Vbuld then efiter, with set piece is developed as an express1on of senttment or mood. • .. •
the action arranged io lead up tcr ari ensemble Finllle whose centrepiece·wquld The exPectation is that there will De-rwo Static mOVements, the second ptore SPlflted
be 1ln impressive pezi!b concettato at a relati~ely slow tempo. (See Tab!~ II.) than thf first. In duet and aria scenes the ieihpo ad'agio has been ~~e:ed _for [2] fo~owing
Terms like cdbdletta and pezzo concert(}(b,,- not to nien"tion 'slow moveinent' Basi:vi.to The term·cantabile is often Used. ~ecause of the amb1gu!nes mhere~t.m ,both
}- 'designate movements withiti· whole musical numbers; they' are ffiusico- adagio and cantabile, to describe ~a..~genre, however, the Eflghsh express1on slow
.dr<lllllitic events on the middleground plane where· po<!tic structure• and movement' is p.referable ·11 • •

dramatic structure constitute the primary ··relationship. Of Co\lrsC this The siatic movement [4] is called cabaletta (etymology unknown) mana scenes, str~tt~
relationship too is ultimately goVerned by nlusical expectations, for witliin (tig\ltening) in ensembleJ'\nales, and 6y either t~rm ~n GraQd Duet scenes. Jbough It 1s
rarel{ slower than [2],.)t is not always fast and nmsy. ,,
numbers as well there were conventions abot.it the Iilatid'nshiJ1 between kihds Beiween a slow moveoient and a cabaletta/str'etta a kinetic tempo di mezzo Cn;tovem~nt
of poeti~ text and musical moverrtent. Th~se' conventions may be ·follOwed, in between), was Cxpected to intrOduce neW: actio~ to ~uild to a sec?~d.stopp~ng pot!lt.
bent, or thwarted, but they are not simp!§• ignored. ' " Shake~are's Act One sCene 5 pr'ovfded a pert'ect s1rua"t1on for the pnma ifonna s cavatma
'The Shakespeareart1leqtlence of events betwten Macbeth's ehtmnce in Act with temJ;o di ihkzo, as well as a striking opening scena. • .
One seen~ 5 and·tl!t discbvery oftM murder i~ A'ct•Two seen~ 31ept itself to The kinetic movement'[!], labelled tethpo d4ttaccct, sets up the first ~tattc movement m
~the generic expectationS of an Aria-DuCt-Finale 'sequence. "The omission of a dueror Finale. In most aria scene~, tbescena is followed ~y a s~attc slbw movement,
Duntart from all but an: .in§tfument'ally· atcompanie(f processiOn waS a. though when two or more principals are on stage )Jefore an ana, th1s too may be set up by
decisiOn made 'at the' backgrouncf level; it·'3voids.··any'interi'U'p'l:i0n of the a tempo d'attacco.
seq1l"en&, as'well..:as'beingan ecmfomy~in'casting. Shakespeare's porter scene
would similarly have broken the Aria-Duet-Finale progression.

20 21
 Making dividing points and elisions, in Shakespeare for the musical 'Methought I heard a voice cry .. .' Lady Macbeth: 'Who was it that thus
movements presented relatively fe\y prob!ems. To get Lady Macbeth's cried?'). To Macbeth's tale of what his voice told him, Lady Macbeth rejoins
cavatina (No.3) out of Shakespeare's Act bne scene 5 the only decision was with a sarcastic parody.
where to begin the slow movement. In the Finale (No. 6), the exits and
entrances that follow the announcement ofthe murder were replaced by some MACBETH
ofPiave's text not based on Shakespeare; this not only simplified the action A voice spoke within me, unearthly and Allor questa voce m'intesi nel petto:
but, more importantly, provided for a pezzo concertato. hollow:
Providing a motivation and a structure for a static slow movement in the 'Your nightmare has started, but worse is Avrai per guanciali sol vepri, o Machetto!
duet (No."'4) was Piave's only serious problem. The dramatic confrontation in to follow!
the play (from Act One scene 5 thtbugh Act Two scene 3) is between' resolution You murdered him sleeping, so sleep you ll sonno per sempre, Glamjs, uccidesti!
and vacilliltion, whether in Macbeth's mind or between Lady Macbeth's have murdered!
resolution and Macbeth's vacillation. bhe internal conflict is expressed in two And you, ThaneofCawdor, will not sleep Non v'f:.che vigilia, Caudore, per tel
great monologues: 'If it were done when 'tis done' from Act One scene 7, and again!'
'Is this a dagger which I see 6efore me?' from Act Two scene I. Each LADY MACBETH
monologue is followed -in the former case immediately, in the latter after the But what of the voices you-should have Ma, dimmi, altra voce non parti d'udire?
murder - by a confrontation with Lady Macbeth; a dialogue on the same been hearing? 5
theme. Given the dd:jsion to express the resolution-vacillation cOiUrontation ·'Macbeth is ambitious, but he is a coward: Sei vano, o Macbetto, tha privo d'ardire:
mu_sically in monologue ,as well, as in dialogue, either would have made 'a His work is not finished, he dare not Glamis, a mezz'opra vacilli, t'arresti,
logtcal sequence for scena and tempo d'attacco. The musico-dra111atic problem in · complete it.
The heart ofa baby, a vain, boastful boy.' Fanciul vanitoso, Caudore, ru se'. 12
both cases is the same, that there is no obvious pretext to stop the dialogue for
a reflective slow movement. The problem is compounded in the second .
instance by the fact that Macbeth's reentnince after the murder with 'I have The parallelism in poetic const~uction and the contrast in semantic affect
dOne the deed" is the best moment for a' parola sceliicd - it became 'Tutto e are both reflected in Verdi's music. The openings of each first line [5a, b] are
finito' - but it comes tOo soon to stop the aCtidn and launcli a slow inovement; unharmonised, with instruments doubling the melody (or even only part ofit).
it comes before rather than after the two-person confrontation that would The second half of Macbeth's line 'Allor questa voce m'intesi nel petto' issei
have to be us.~d, to make thC terrzpo d'attacco. The monologue OfthC,'dagger ~f exactly like the first half; the second halfofLady Macbeth's 'Ma, dimmi, altra
the mind', however, With its vivid pictori3.1ism, followed by Lady Macbeth's voce non parti d'udire?' is harmonised in the upper strings, but like Macbeth's
speech at the beginning"Of Act Two scene 2 - not to mentiol) the bell 'that line, it continues in bb minor, with the 'f)J-fofMacbeth's 'voce' in the cellos'
su~mons thee to heaven-or to hell' and tpe hoot of an owl - is not only more bass line.
sutted to the genere fantastico but also more musicabile than Macbeth's more As for the second lines, the parallelism is most marked in the setting of the
philosophical monologue. Furthermore the monologue and dialogue in first half, and the parallel continues in only slightly less strict form in lines 3
ShakeSpeare's Act Two are directly linked to the act ofmurder, as they are not and 4. Macbeth's line is a four-bar phrase stretched to five by a written-out
in his Act One. ritenuto, as the opening repeated bbs are lifted up to rest on c'. His line 3, the
The problem ofhow to stop the confrOntation for a slow movem~rit, atid the 'Glamis' line, has the same musical pattern one tone higher, bringing c' up to
related pr9bleni.oft]le parola 'scenica ocCurriDg before the confrohtation 111ther d' · his line 4 reverts to an unprotracted four-bar phrase and brings the line up
than as its climax, could not be overcome without manipulating either the through eb' and e' to climax at three repeatedf's for '[Cau]dore per [te]'. Lady
Shakespearean text or the generic ~xpectations,. and in fact both were Macbeth's parody in her own lines 2, 3 and 4 is similarly shaped: the repeated
manipulated. Piave made an ingenious if obvious amplification of Shakes- d" s and their slow mordent ofthe first half ofline 2 are
matched a tone higher
peare to provide a more formally structured, lyrical slow movement,J.nventing With eb"s in the first half ofline 3; they climax yet another tone higher in her
some new text for Lady Macbeth to do so. And Verdi balanced the premature fi.;al line 4, with three repeated f's moving up to g" for '[Fan]ciul
parola scenica by making a formal close and a thematic recurrence later on, vanito[so]'.
where neither would normally be expected. The musical devices linking the settings of their respective stanzas, to sum
Piave's solution for the slow movement of the duet was to divide the up, are these: unisons in the respective lines 1 versus harmonised
Shakespearean dialogue at the moment where Macbeth stops reporting what accompaniment in the respective lines 2, 3 and 4; and in each one's stanza
~.~heard and said, or not said-' ''Amen" stuck in my.throat' -'and Starts those three lines themselves are similarly set, each with a repeated-note figure
reporting what he imagined: 'Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep nq m9re" I in the same rhythm, a figure that is repeated twice more in rising stepwise
... "Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor I Shall sle'ep no sequence. These parallels in textural and motivic design constitute a musical
more: Macber.h shall sleep no more".'· But however useful this may haVe ~ equivalent of the parallels in the poetic design of the stanzas.
for distinguishing kinetic 'from static, Lady Macbeth's lines in Shakespeare The contrast in the semantic affect for the imagined voices - Macbeth's
continue in a thoroughly uftreflective manner/In order to give her a matching threatening, Lady Macbeth's mocking- is likewise matched in the music: in
stanza for the slow movement, Piave simply adapted Macbeth's speeches, as the continuing minor mode for Macbeth's imagined voice versus"'the Major
mode for his Lady's parody; and in hamm~ring laden low winds and climactic

I
he had versified them, to make Lady Macbeth's response, attaching three
verbal parallels that do not exisf in Shakespeare to the one that does (Macbeth: timpani for Macbeth versus the cellos and clarinet for his Lady.

22 ' 23
 With such entrances as '~have done the deed' ('Tutto e finito') and 'Our
royal master's murdered' ('E morto assassinate il Re Duncano!') as coups de
thidtre; with the striking characters of a ferocious yet sometimes indecisive
warrior in the title role and an ambitious leading lady who finishes with a mad
scene, with contrasting situations which invited adaptation to the ·expecta-
tions of the lyric theatre, and with an ambience so suited to thegenerefantastico
as that provided by the prophecies and apparitions created by a coven of
witches, what Bernard Shaw wrote of Othello and Otello was obviously just as
true for Macbeth and Macbeth forty years earlier:
With such a libretto Verdi was quite at home: his success with it proves,
not that he could occupy Shakespear's plane but that Shakespear could
on occasion occupy his.

3. The three principals

The witches
Verdi's twofold characterisation of the witches as alternatively 'coarse and
gossipy' and 'sublime and prophetic' had its source in August Wilhelm
Schlegel, who was the most significant of the nineteenth-century Shakes-
pearean critics so far as Verdi's Macbeth is concerned. Verdi's understanding of
the witches came directly out of an excerpt from Schlegel's 'Lectures on
Dramatic Art and Literature' that was appended to Rusconi's translation of
Macbeth (in the Italian translation of Giovanni Gherardini).
With one another the witches discourse like women of the very lowest
class; for this was the class to which witches were ordinarily supposed to
belong: when, however, they address Macbeth, they assume a loftier
tone: their predictions, which they themselves pronounce, or allow
their apparitions to deliver, have all the obscure brevity, the majestic
solemnity, of oracles, such as have ever spread terror among
mortals. 13
This can be added to Daniela Goldin's listing ofthe 'play ofcontrasti' in Verdi's
Macbeth, and Verdi used the witches' opposed qualities to open his opera. A
combination of features makes the tune shown in Example lNl 'coarse and
gossipy', chief among them the staccato repeated notes, the increasingly odd
downward skips on 'pensier', 'lo spo[so]', and 'suo le[gno]', and the out-of-
context long note at the bottom of the skip, followed by a sudden doubling of
the pace. This musical vulgarity is related to the text, based on the first witch's
'A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap' speech. The trills in the melody-
,, doubling upper winds accompanying the witches' twice accented d#, and the
steady staccato chords in the orchestra, though they have no intrinsically
vulgar flavour, are appropriately crude at this tempo. The witches' address to
Macbeth is a different matter (Example IN2). The 'majestic solemnity of
oracles' is marked by the slower tempo, by the threefold rising sequence of
salutations to Macbeth, and by solemn accompanying chords in middle and
lower winds, marked by shuddering strings. It is a paradigmatic instance of a
'ritual scene' .14
A similar contrast of coarseness and sublimity, not quite so stark perhaps,
I but on a far grander scale, is made between the witches' opening chorus in Act
I
Maria Callas as Lady Macbeth, La Scala, Milan, 1952. (Photo: Erio Piccagliant) Three (Verdi's No. 10) and the scene of the three apparitions (the tempo
il,
d'attacco of Verdi's No. 11). The witches' chorus is a vulgar 'ritual' scene, a
straightforward italianisation of Shakespeare's 'Thrice the brindled cat hath

:'I 24
25
'
 Example1AI1 mewed , .. Double, double, toil, and trouble .. .' and' so on. But after
Macbeth's dialogue with the witches in recitative at the beginning of the next
CHORUS OF WITCHES
•~.umber, the tempo d'at!acco begins with the witches' invocation ofthe infernal
SOP.3 spirits; it is shown in Example lB and the tempo, the instrumentation and
Andante sostenuto
rhythm in the orchestra, the doubling ofthe voices with trumpet and clarinet,
1
I!\! I! ''"""""'"'"""''
j J. J•l '~ ~ I.J..
,I all suppon an inexorable triadic rise and fall ('alte regioni ... scendete') that
is cenainly 'sublime and prophetic'. The scene of the apparitions is a serious

11
I
1
SOP.2
Sal .. ve o
Hail to
Mac ... bet ... to,
Mac-bclh, the

- Gla ... IDis a1

J )I"
I
~I
Thane 9f • Glmnisl _ _
'ritual scene', like their salutations in Act One, but much more complex. And
though the witches themselves have little enough to say during the
confrontation of Macbeth and the three apparitions, the apparitions in their
'obscure brevity' are, as Schlegel noted, dramatically speaking but emanations
of the witches in their 'loftier tone'.
'I
I' Sal ... ve, o Mae ... bet ... to,
I .J
dl C.u ... dor ,;
lr ~I·
l

I Hal1 to Mac-beth, lhc ~

"""" of Caw - dot!
'
Example1B
SOP.1
> > f
~ r - r· I.J r· ~ I
if

~
I

...
J
If'.
s.J

""' ..
·~·
Mac ... bet
Mac- beth,
- who will•
-
"" ,.- "' bo
~!
King!

Example 1AI2
CHORUS OF WITCHES
Allegro assai moderato

~~~II= ,. .,. , , A
A

~ ~ I~ ~ ~ J• .,. lu
.,.
M"O
Ld ""'""' - ~
pol
- .~ ~I

"""" ""' - """"

- liet
AY
CHORUS OF WITCHES

-
-
La mo-glic-ra d'un 1)00 ... cbier,
How to 'lmrt t:bc llli-lor'a wife,
m·~ frul-la ... ta ...
Who is stand-ing In our way.
nel pen ... sier
'l\'·!Tn75>J ob~·w· w
Oal-lc bas-see dall-'al- te re - gio J ni, 3
1

~' ~ ~.Ll;¥ JJnJ!tu IJ¥ ~ ~.u_j From the low- est and high-e5l

f
of re glons,

~·\,-, yt) ild

rna lo spo - so, rna lo spo-.so chc sal .. pb col suo leg ...

),J Jl l1q1f+
For her hus - band is a !111!-lor Oil the sea; Wewill5how

)!
) )u)
col 1110
'if' i IJ'
kg-noaf-fo ... ghc ... rO.
.
J spir-ti er- nm-li. sa- li - te, seen - de
Let the spl- rits ap-peAl' and as - sem
.J te!
ble!

how ma ... U ... clous we can , be.

26 27
 Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth's personality, for most of the opera as for most of
Shakespeare's play, is vividly marked by alternation between public and
private ethos, and in her private moods, between ambition for power and
apprehension of her husband's will to get it and keep it. At both levels the
contrasts are heightened in the opera and its music: the contrast of private
versus public by advantageous use of familiar conventions, as in the cabaletta
'Or tutti sorgete' in Act One versus the brind£si 'Si colmi il calice' [12] in the
Act 1\vo Finale (compare Shakespeare's Act Three scene 4); while to her
contempt for Macbeth's vacillations is added a tone of mockery, above all in
the slow movement of the duet. Her hallucinated final scene is as unprepared
in Shakespeare as it is in Verdi, and Shakespeare highlighted the shock ofher
changed state by casting it in prose. Piave's text matches this effect in that the
soliloquy is versified not as an aria properly speaking but as though it were a
free-standing tempo d'atlacco: six quatrains in one verse metre (ottonario ),
grouped in three pairs, with comments from the Doctor and Lady-in-Waiting
introduced at the start of stanzas 3, 4, 5 and 6, to make a scene unprecedented
in the Verdian canon. The music reflects not only her altered state but a
continuity in persona, in giving to her final lyric appearance a musical colour
(a tinta musicale) that echoes the slow movement of the ca'Oatina in Act One
(see Thematic Guide [3] and [16]).
Both movements are in Db Major; whether the choice of tonality signifies
much in itself is moot, but the common key ensures that the more direct
acoustic connection, the similarities in the treatment ofthe vocal register, will
be that much stronger because the very same pitches, the identical qualities of
the soprano voice, are involved. Theme [3a] shows the opening phrase (lines
1-2) and [3b] the climax phrase (lines 5-6) of the Andantino of her cavatina;
[16a] and [16b] show the corresponding phrases (lines 1-2 and 5-6) in the first
part of the sleepwalking aria. The dominant melodic feature throughout is a
consistent disjunction of voice registers, connected midphrase only through
the downward fall of the sixth. Moreover, the accompaniment rhythm for the
sleepwalking aria echoes that of the Andantino: each comprises a bass
downbeat followed by a decelerating sequence of repeated afterbeat chords in
upper strings. In the sleepwalking aria two figures added to those decelerating
afterbe_ats mark the alteration in Lady Macbeth's state: in the middle strings, a
chromatic scale rising through a diminished fifth; in the cor anglais, a
descending semitone. Both intervals are familiar symbols in nineteenth-
century music, the diminished fifth signifying unnatural evil, the semitone
signifying misery. In this context they are readily perceived as complications
in Lady Macbeth's musical persona arising from a suppressed guilt as great as
that of her husband.
Differing degrees of coherence in Lady Macbeth's discourse in the rwo
passages are signified rhythmically, both in Piave's choice and handling ofthe
verse metres, and in Verdi's musical setting. Piave's otuman·o verses for 'Una
macchia' break midline far more readily than his settenario verses for 'Vieni
t'affretta'. Verdi exploits the opportunity for disjunction versus continuity
(Themes [3] and [16]); note the difference between the low register phrases,
the smooth second line of 'Vieni t'affretta', for instance, as against the
disjointed first line of'Una macchia'. Within 'Una macchia', the broken low-
register settings of the half-lines 'una macchia', 'C qui tutt'ora', and 'orsU,
t'affretta' are in pitiful contrast with the two long lyric phrases that contain the
Leonie Rysanek as lAdy Macbeth, San Francisro, 1957. (Piwco: SFO)
legato drop from upper to lower register, for 'Via ti dico o maledetta' and 'Un

30 31
 guerrier cosl codardo? I Oh vergognaP. In 'Vieni t'affretta', to the contrary,
there is by and large as much continuity in the low-register phrases as there is
elsewhere.
The three sets of paired quatrains in 'Una macchia', with the panicipation
of two onlookers- as opposed to the two uninterrupted quatrains of'Vieni
t'affretta' -led to a fundamental difference offormal dynamic in the musical
setting, that emerges only gradually. The first two stanzas of'Una macchia'
Lady Macbeth has all to herself - and the eighteen bars of their music
correspond structurally with the rwenty bars composed for the whole rwo-
II quatrain text of'Vieni t'affretta'. But where 'Vieni t'affretta' then goes into a
I
long coda, with words from lines 7-8 as the text, 'Una macchia' moves to music
for four more quatrains, with contrasting materials, harmonies, and
instrumental textures, returning to the principal subject in various keys, and
so on. The formal openness of the latter is apparent in the relative amount of
text repetition in it, and the corresponding proportions ofmusical extension to
musical substance. More than half of 'Vieni t'affretta' is devoted to purely
musical extension or preparation - as befits a static movement. 'Una
macchia' is 68 bars long, and the last six constitute an instrumental coda to the
scene rather than just to the aria, in that they return to music not heard since
the orchestral prelude andscena. Text repetitions amount to only about sixteen
bars, no more than a quarter of the whole aria. There is plenty of musical
development in 'Una macchia', but most ofit is done with fresh text, as befits a
movement that is truly kinetic - sleepwalking notwithstanding.

Macbeth
Macbeth's musical persona is both too complex and too simple to be dealt with
so summarily- too complex in that his moods and music shift frequently and
violently, too simple in that they are almost always reactions to external W,Iliam Dooley and Gladys Kuchta as the Macbeths, Deutsche Oper, Berlin, 1963.
forces, parts of a contrasto, whether with the supernatural or with his Lady, or (P/wro: Buhs}
with both at once (in the banquet scene), or with his enemies (in Act Four). His
persona is reflected in the Preludio, whose subjects are drawn from
instrumental music associated with those forces in their most unnatural
,,'I I
forms: from the music for the witches and their apparitions in Act Three (with
a single flourish from their music in Act One); and from Lady Macbeth's
sleepwalking in Act Four. Macbeth himself is given no such obvious
characterising music of his own, and in the 1865 version of the opera it i~ onl_y
in his pan of the scena before the duet - the dagger monologue - and m h1s
Act Four slow movement 'Piet3., rispetto, amore' that we encounter him alone,
in the way we come to know Lady Macbeth in her three extended aria scenes. 15
In the 1847 Macbeth the protagonist is much more fully developed, and he fully
holds his own with the prima donna, with a cabaleua 'Vada in fiamme!' ending
Act Three and a sort of cabaletta 'Mal per me' ending the opera. 16 Both were
replaced for Paris in 1865, the one with a duet alia cabaletta with La~y
Macbeth, the other by the triumph of Malcolm and Macduff, as m
Shakespeare, and two choruses.
'Piet3., rispetto, amore', with its scena, uses most of Macbeth's penultimate
moment of reflection in the play (Act Five scene 3). It is a pathetic slow
movement, of a familiar cast; in 1847 this constituted the scena and slow
movement of a single long aria scene for Macbeth, with an elaborate tempo di
I' :1 mezzo and a concluding set piece only subliminally perceivable as a cabaletta.
In 1847, therefore, Macbeth dominated the opera after the sleepwalking scene
I to the end. In the autograph the sequence is called 'No. 15: scena, battaglia, e
lnge Borkh as Lady Macbeth, San Francisco Opera, 1955. (Phow: Robert Lackenbach)
1,,,
32 33
II"'' I
rilorte di Macbet'; the vocal part sent &y Verdi on February 4, 1847 to Felice dell'infemo' in 'Oersi otpmari, set to twenty bars ofAdagio in fminor; a ten-bar
Varesi, the first Macbeth, is headed 'Scena, aria e mone di Macbet'. In the Allegro for Malcolm, Macduffand chorus concludes the opera." That 'Mal per
letter accompanying it Verdi referred to the whole ~quence in the singulat, as me; acts as a sub-genre o£: ~baletta, once noted, is undeniable. The slow
'questa seena finale' and '}'ultimo pezzo', and he also alluded to its individual anapaest rhythms in the accompaniment (see Example 2) project a 'double
lyric movements, as 'un Adagio in re b', 'l'intermezzo', and 'Ia morte'. 17 'fhe image.,,They hammet..out·th~ fumiliar topos that Frits Noske called 'the
.'Adagio' is of course 'Piet:\, rispetto_, amore', which was retained unchanged, musical figure of death'~' and they "echo a cabaleaa "accompaniment that is
with its scena, in 1865. The 'intermezzo' begins with.the report of Lady nQrtnally he;ml;at a (ast tempo. .,
Macbeth's death and Macbeth's 'tale told by an idiot' and continues with the From a reference in that letter of February "4, 1847, urging Varesi that
report that BirnamWood is on the move, both decasillabi passages; a change of 'Mac,bet~rpustn't die.lik:e Edgard.o, Gennaro, etc.', we may even infer that
,set to the battlefield brings in rwo lines ofottonari for Malcolm, and music for Verdi himself thought o( ~Mal. per me' as a quasi-eabaletta for the dying
th'e battle. Up to this point the text of the 'intermezzo' rerpained the same for protagonist,' for the death~ofEdgardo and Gennaro fonn <he conclusion of
·1847 and 1865, though the music was increasingly recompOsed. For Macbeth's multi-movement firntl numOers in • Donizetti's Lucia di "Lammennoor and
fight with Macduff, the 1847 text continues with lyric verse, in settenan'; in Lucr'ezia Borgia (in" the 1840 Milan version that Verdi would have known).
.1865, their dialogue is in versi sciolti, thus breaking the poetic continuity. Ed.gardo's 'Tu che a Dio spiegasti l'ali' is a straightforward cabaletta in
In 1847 th"e fight concludes on stage, with Macbeth mortally wounded. moderate tempo; Geruiaro's 'Madre, se ognor lontano' is a 29-bar thrOugh-
Then comes the non-shakespearean 'Mal per me che m'aflidai I Ne' presagi composed Larglretto followed by a nineteen-bar Allegro outburSt from Lucrezia
and ..the orchestra.
The 1847 aria 'Mal per me' Shaping the end of the opera in 1847 as an aria scene- that is, framing the
action· from the.report of Lady Macbeth's death to Macbeth's defeat by
Example 2: 1847 Macduffby two set piecesfor Macbeth - provides a cohesion by the evocation
MACBETH offamiliar conventions. That'Cohesion was lost in the 1865 revision, whatever
Adagio may have beeh gained by a closer approximation to Shakespeare. Also lost was
the dominant presence of the protagonist, who simply fuaes offstige, fighting
Macduff the while. I
The elimination of Macbeth!s·1847 solo cohaletta 'Vacfa irl fiamme' at the
dJc m'al"-ri-
for I have
end of Act Three and the non-Shakespearean reappear""'ce ofLady Macbeth
do less damage f6 the title role quantitatively than"the changes fb tlle end of
Act Four (Macbeth at least ~ains on stage to the end" ot'Act Three), but they
weaken the coherence of the Act in the saine way. The 'A1:t was originally
~n~eived. as a gigantic aria scene fqr ·M,a,beth (No. li in the autograph),
prece<\ed by a sce~e-setting chorus for the witches (No. 10 in the autograph);
for that" purpose Shakespeare's Act Four scene 1 needed no structurat·Changes
whatever. As already noted, the 'ritual scene' of the witches with their three
apparitions in confrontation with Macbeth serves as tempo d'auacco. The slow
mov..emept,ofthe expanQed .aria sc~ne ,is Macbeth'~ 'ruggi, r~gal (antasima';
... - nc'
in
pn:-sa - gl
the prompt - ings
dell- 'in-
of <he
the phrase structure ofthe text settmg js absolutely regular throughout, but in
the first quatrain it is interrupted several times by offstage music for the eight
kil).gs; the seco~d quatrain is set,, with neither instrumental nor scenic
intenilption, kas 'Pfoper cdntabile' as Verdi put it in ah9rher letter to Varesi. 20
This music too was considerably retouched in 18ti5 Out not changed in

r essentials. The chorus of witches 'Ondine e Silfidi' and the ballet of aerial
spirits, unchanged' in 1866; serves as ~a tetnpo d~· mezzo ·between the slow
nioVemerit aDd the final'static inovemenr, 'Vada in fiamme', a cabaleua only
slightly modified from the conventional desig_n.11 In 1865, 'Vada in fiaJllme'
was replaced by a coha/etta-like duet movement for Macbeth and Laay
Macbeth ('Ora di morte'), preceded by a short seena in which Macbeth repeats
rcr no. what we have just heard the apparitions tell him, an uncharacteristic
de vii! redundancy necessitated by the introduction ofLady Macbeth for a cabaletta a
2. The structural cohesion ofAct Three - depending on the conventions ofan
aria scene - was already stretched to the limit in 1847; the new final scene
with Lady Macbeth breaks that cohesion so that this Act Three, like the last
part ofAct Four, is now heard as a series of separate pieces, rather than as a
single complex musico-dramatic event.

34 35
 Notes 'Macbeth' and the Nineteenth-Century Theatre
I. G.B. Shaw, 'A Word more about Verdi', in TheAngW-Saxon Rmew 8 (Mareh 1901),
221•29. Michael R. Booth
'I: I 2. See G. Schmidgol~ 'Verdi'sKmg Learproject',J9fh.Cehnny Music 9(1985), 82-101 for
, I a valuable summary of the hOretto in relation to Shakespeare. Although Verdi knew Shakespeare's Macbeth (in Italian translation) and made
1,, 3. P. Petrobelli, 'Music in the theatre: apropos ofAida Act IIr in Themes in Drama_ J: many efforts to bring Piave's libretto closer tp what he believed to be the
Drama, daltce and mwic (Cambridge UP 1980). original text, he had never seen Shakespeare's play on the stage before the
4. The letters may be seen in Verdi's Macbeth: a Sourcebook, ed. Rosen and Porter (New Florence premiere in March, 1947. (He did see it in London three months
York 1982). The selva fof Enrani (by Piave and Mocenigo) is in the Introduction:to the later.) There were several Italian translations ofShakespeare but no tradition
Critical 'Edition nf Ernani edited by C. Gallico. J.N. Black,has published the text of of playing Shakespeare in Italy; the first Italian .production of Macbeth
Cammarano's programma for R tro'Datore in Studi verdiani 2 (Parma 1983). D. Goldin has occurred two }-ears after the first production of the opera. Later, Shakespeare
reedited Verdi's prose surqmary for Simon Boa:anegra in the programme for the Maggio in Italian became part ofthe repertory of the Italian tragedians Ernesto Rossi
Musicale 1989. and Tomasso Salvini, and Macbeth was played extensively in Italy and abroad
5. D. Qoldin, 'TI Macbezh verdiano' in La oera fenia (Thrin, 1979, 1985). 245-6. on tour by Adelaide Ristori, the greatest Italian actress before Eleonora Duse.
6.Sourcebook,99. Yet the elements ofspectacle and funtasy which Verdi stressed in Macbeth -
7. F. Nosk.e, •rutual scenes' in The Signi[wr and the Signified: Studies in the operas ofMozart supernaturalism, witches, aerial spirits - had a long history in English
and Verdi (The l;lague 1977), 241-70. productions of Macbeth and were essential aspects of the nineteenth-century
8. A. Basevi distinguished these two sub-types of texture as parlante armonico and staging of the play, as well as being integral to European production styles in
par/ante melodiuJ in his Studio suUe optre di Giuseppe Verdi (Florence 1859~ 30-32. the first half of the century. Verdi may have had no experience ofMacbeth on
9. Verdi's famous expression is often descnbed ambiguously or erroneously. Verdi used stage before the premiere, but he was Certainly aware of, and was part of, the
parola scenica to denote the word or words that lawtch a set piece- that is, precede it- climate of visual display in the theatre of his time'.
not the ones that begin it. The element of staging in the opera that most lent itself to spectacular
10. Basevi op. cit., 191. treatment was the supernatural. Macbeth in particular among Shakespearean
11. For the crucial distiuetion of textural, temporal and fuhna1 desiguations, and for tragedies had long carried the baggage ofsupernaturalism in performance, and
much more besides, I am in4ebted to the unpublished 1975 Princeton University when in England Restoration stage machinery and the vogue ofadaptation to
doctoral dissertation ofRobert Moreen, Integration oftext forms and musicalforms in Verdi~ prevailing taste were applied to Macbeth, supernaturalism became spectacle.
earlY operas (University Microfilms International, UM 76-20782). Verdi's singing and dancing witches had been a feature of Macbeth since
12. F. Degrada has Shown that a few changes were made in these sranzas when Maffei Thomas Middleton's Elizabethan interpolation of the Hecate scene and Sir
was touching up ~ia~e's hbretto (S,ourceix>ok, 163-4 and 31 ~ but they do not afli:ct the William Davenant's adaptation of 1674, when it is probable that Matthew
baSic cOncept, whereby Lady Macbeth'~ statm;t is a sarcastic pirody of Macbeth's, locke or William Purcell provided music for them. They survived a long time:
similarly marked bY the three names. I have italicised the names to show the parallelism
of the verses. ~
Henry Irving's Macbeth at the Lyceum in 1888 used a 'Flight of Witches'
numbering some fifty or sixty, and much spectacle, with fire glimmering on
13. Sourcebook, 347.
the mountain rocks, the sky dripping blood, and atmospheric mist a-plenty.
14. Cf. Nooke op. cit., 245-7. The fact that Irving's staging closely resembled his staging of the Bracken
15. Lady Macbeth's 1865 Act 1\vo aria 'La luce langpe' replaced her 1847 cabaletta scene, or witches' sabbath, in his Faust of three years earlier, shows how
'Trionfui!' (SouruW, 488-91). See page 91. nineteenth-century producers with the right equipment and stage facilities felt
16. See p. 92: ' ' obliged to make the supernatural as spectacular as possible. Macbeth was
17. For Verdi's letter to Varesi ofFebruary 4t 1847, and a facsimile ofthe first page oftl}_e known fur this kind of spectacle, especially by the gallery audience. A London
vocal part he sent. see &uruhook, 41-2. costermonger told the investigative journalist Henry Mayhew in the 1850s
18. Sef p. 92. that he and his mates would like Macbeth better 'if it was only the witches and
19. Noske, op. ciL,171-214.1 am mueh indebted to Profi:ssor Daniel Thddie ofBethel the fighting.' A Punch-and-Judy man interviewed by Mayhew knew the play
Cpllege (oral communication) for hip insightful observation ofthe double funcrjon ofthe as Macbeth and the Three Dancing Witches.
accompaniment rhythms in 'Mal per me'. The form of nineteenth-century drama in which the supernatural was
20. Sourcebook ~6 (late January, 1847). strongest was melodrama. The so-called Gothic melodrama originated in
France, influenced by the English Gothic novel of Horace Walpole and Ann
Radcliffe and by the Stunn Ul)d Drapg tragedy of Go$:the and Schiller.
Melodrama was the expression of the Romantic movement in the popular
theatre: in dramatic content, acting style, setting, colour, intensity and
sensation. The Gothic variety ofmelodrama specialised in gloomy castles and
equally gloomy tyrints, ·ruins, wild moorlands and mountains, villainous
robber chiefs, noble bandits, virtuous woodsmen and peasants, fleeing
heroines with their golden hair down, and ghosts. Before Macbeth, Verdi used

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