Series of distractions

Verdi’s Macbeth is one of those operas which I always have hopes will be greater than it ever actually seems in performance. Its seriousness of intention is plain from the outset, and by and large Verdi maintains an intensity which the subject requires, and which isn’t to be found in any of his previous nine operas. The Witches are a problem, and all the special pleading on their behalf still doesn’t begin to solve it convincingly. But there are other, more elusive things about the opera than that which cause me difficulties, and which mean that Macbeth, for all the great interpretations of the two chief characters which there have been over the years, still fails to make it into the canon of Verdi’s major works with any degree of security. It needs to prove itself each time it is presented, in a way that at least ten of the others don’t.