Opera Scotland

Macbeth 2014Scottish Opera

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Dominic Hill's first attempt at directing opera, Macbeth in 2005, with piano accompaniment, was a great success, followed quickly by an equally good full-scale production of Falstaff.

Macbeth, as was shown by the company's earlier staging by Richard Jones in 1987, can work very well with piano. For this revival, Tony Burke's reduced orchestration was employed for the spring performances in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the keyboard returned for the extensive autumn tour.

Hill's remarkable production makes a positive virtue of the reduced resources. There were seven singers involved, with the witches as three solo roles instead of chorus. They provided effective doublings as Lady-in-waiting and the apparitions. Banquo doubled as doctor, with Macduff as Messenger at the outset. No murderer was required, since Macbeth did his own killing, and Fleance escaped from the clutches of Lady M.

There were minor cuts, most notably the final celebratory chorus, which would have challenged the resources involved. The evening ended with Macbeth's downbeat solo re-instated from the original 1847 score - a common practice nowadays.

The work of Scottish Opera's education branch was in evidence. Throughout this tour, local workshops are held in a chosen primary school (for Dundee it was Craigiebarns), with six children of varying heights being selected to walk on as the future monarchs, and to play Fleance. Let us hope this will prove an effective way to change perceptions of opera and help build an audience for the future.

David Stephenson's Macbeth is a beautifully assured performance, all of a piece dramatically, with a lovely account of 'Pietà, rispetto amore' to climax. Catrin Aur offered a bright tone, at ease with both opening aria and sleepwalking scene. Thomas Faulkner has an ideal Banquo voice, smooth and firm, though his acting was perhaps a little stiff in doctor mode. Anthony Flaum's tenor came over well in Macduff's aria, leading the exiles effectively. Indeed the chorus of exiles sounded fine given the small number of voices available, and built to a rousing climax. The three witches were all consistently good in their highly prominent roles, and Andrew Porter's effective translation, liberally laced with Shakespearean lines, was clearly projected.

The biggest cheer of a thoroughly engaging evening in Dundee was reserved for the excellent pianist, Susannah Wapshott. She earned a hugely deserved ovation for what must be an exhausting performance.

Read about previous performances of Macbeth in Scotland here.