“Macbeth” is awash is marvelous choral music, for the multitude of witches (Verdi saw a chorus blossoming from Shakespeare’s three “weird sisters) as well as the general folk. Upon hearing of his family’s fate, Macduff sings a heart-rending lament that Guerrero delivered with consummate tenderness. Tenor Joshua Guerrero contributed one of the evening’s finest vocal moments as Macduff, the Thane of Fife, whose family Macbeth orders exterminated with the intentional of also getting rid of Macduff as a threat to his crown. In pacing and arc, in the spotlighting of solo voices and his measured indulgence in the work’s crucial choral episodes, this was gripping music drama.Īll that said, what is perhaps most striking about Lyric’s new “Macbeth” is the commingling of designer John Macfarlane’s unit set (in fifty shades of gray), David Finn’s eerie play of light upon it, and the imaginative tableaux that McVicar frames within what is essentially a weathered old chapel, infusing the whole proceeding with singular irony, or perhaps singular perversity.

This “Macbeth” was something apart, not just an excellent example of the “early” Verdi in which he specializes, but more, a ringing affirmation of the conductor’s sensibility to opera as theater. Mazzola had already made his mark at Lyric in guest appearances that led the company to put its artistic fortunes in his hands.

The potent new production of “Macbeth,” devised by David McVicar, was led by Enrique Mazzola in his first flourish as Lyric’s music director. In his operatic retelling, Verdi went straight to heart of the tale’s dark and brilliant confusion – its chiaroscuro – and it resonates with bleak authenticity in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s return to the stage.

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