Giuseppe Verdi - Macbeth / Nucci, Verrett, Riccardo Chailly, Teatro Comunale di Bologna (1987 film)
by Riccardo Chailly, Claude d'Anna

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Movie Reviews of Giuseppe Verdi - Macbeth / Nucci, Verrett, Riccardo Chailly, Teatro Comunale di Bologna (1987 film)

Movie Review: Great recording, poorly filmed
Summary: 2 Stars

Summary of Giuseppe Verdi - Macbeth / Nucci, Verrett, Riccardo Chailly, Teatro Comunale di Bologna (1987 film)

This film version was hailed in Europe when it was released, but some viewers may find it excessively gloomy while others will feel it suits the dark tale of ambition, crime, and madness. D'Anna's witches are primordial creatures first seen crawling out of the slime of a corpse-filled battlefield. Most of the film takes place in Macbeth's castle, shot in an actual 10th-century Belgian castle's subterranean series of rooms, armories, dungeons, and tunnels. Lady Macbeth's Letter Scene is filmed with Verrett wandering down staircases and through tunnels, all in long shots. Duncan's arrival is like a traveling circus troupe, preceded by a fire eater and a juggler, the king carried in a covered litter, only his hand emerging to be kissed by Macbeth and to stroke the head of the man about to murder him. Banquo's ghost is made visible, seated on Macbeth's throne during the debaucheries of the Banquet Scene.

These and other directorial choices are driven by D'Anna's personal vision of the play and the music, often taking his cue from the latter, as in Duncan's arrival which Verdi set to jaunty orchestral music. Others reflect his linkage of crime with the Macbeth couple's sexual dependence. But his vision of the narrative and of specific scenes doesn't violate Shakespeare's story or Verdi's opera, though there will be moments when sensitive viewers may prefer to glance away from the sheer ugliness of the witches or wonder why the singers occasionally turn their backs to the cameras in mid-aria. Much is explained though, in the 45-minute film on the second DVD on the making of the film in which the sheer physical obstacles of the project are explicated and the director's choices clarified. --Dan Davis

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