A program titled “The Legacy of Macbeth: Shakespeare, Verdi, and Raylynmor Opera” will be presented by Ann McEntee at the Hancock Town Library on Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m.
“Double, double toil and trouble, Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” The words of Macbeth’s weird sisters conjure up a world of witchcraft and sorcery, a world in which “time is out of joint.” That world continues to fascinate us 410 years after Shakespeare first staged it.
Extraordinarily popular, productions of Macbeth abound during the months of autumn and early winter. Repertory companies, community theaters, and educational institutions, including elementary schools, stage versions of this dark tragedy annually.
What is the fascination with a play described as one that “opens the door to the other world and beckons them” (Nahum, Slings and Arrows, 2:2)? Why do we return, year after year, to watch a play granted by performers and audience its own special ‘curse’?
McEntee will discuss our cultural fascination with witches and a world upended by political ambition and treason. She examines how Shakespeare manipulated historic documents to create the tragedy, taking into account the sociopolitical climate of James’s first years as England’s king and founder of the Stuart monarchy.
How did Verdi interpret Shakespeare’s Macbeth? Composed during the Romantic era of the 19th century, he created a Gothic world characterized by madness, suicide, curses, melancholy, and terror. We meet not three witches, but rather three covens of six witches each. Lady Macbeth is also a force to be reckoned with, a well-mannered witch inside the palace walls.
As Verdi explained to a theatre manager, “[Macbeth’s] subject is neither political nor religious, it is fantastical.” And yet, the themes of statecraft and the effect on men of the exercise of power belie that statement. In an age of rising nationalism, Verdi’s operagoers experienced a great sense of patriotism.
Raylynmor’s upcoming production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” is set in the present-day United States. Ben Robinson, the opera company’s artistic director, has written an English libretto based directly upon Shakespeare’s text. Set during a presidential election cycle, Robinson’s “Macbeth” transforms the Macbeths into a candidate and his first lady and the wired sisters into television reporters, talk show hosts, and print journalists. This contemporary staging encourages us to consider how and to what extent the media manipulates our perceptions of current events and individuals in the “news.”
Ann M. McEntee, Ph.D. is a small-college theatre and communications professor who has written about Shakespeare and directed stage productions of Shakespeare’s work.
This event is free and open to all.