And “Macbeth” is: everything is ready for the premiere of La Scala. Tomorrow at 6 pm, with live broadcast on Raiuno and Radiotre from 5:45 pm, the curtain will rise on Giuseppe Verdi’s opera directed by Riccardo Chailly and staged by Davide Livermore: and we will also celebrate a new post-epidemic phase for the theater, which, as the superintendent Dominique Meyer points out, “has already been active for three months” but with this Sant’Ambrogio marks a moment of hope and rebirth.
Four aces in the cast, with Lady Anna Netrebko, Luca Salsi’s Macbeth, Francesco Meli’s Macduff and Ildar Abdrazakov’s Banco. The show, defined by Livermore as “dystopian” or “nightmare”, is directly inspired by Christopher Nolan’s film “Inception” and describes a parallel but unfortunately not unrealistic reality in which a tyrant’s will to power leads to unhappiness and upon the death of the subjects. Lady Macbeth, thirsty for blood and the engine of action, is often dressed in red (in a culminating scene also with showy herons embroidered on the dress, the costumes are by Gianluca Falaschi) and lives with her husband in an Assyrian-style phalanstery. New York with a view of the skyscrapers, in the scenography by Giò Forma. There is a huge elevator where everything happens, dizzying terraces for the mother scene of sleepwalking, spectacular videos signed by D-Wok and choreography curated by Daniel Ezralow which also includes the singers. Netrebko revealed on Instagram that she was inspired by Hollywood dark ladies.
Riccardo Chailly based himself on the critical edition of the opera edited by David Lawton and chose the Paris version of 1865, supplemented by the death on stage of Macbeth present at the Florentine premiere of 1847. Chailly frames the title in the project on the young Verdi who he has been pursuing since 2015, first with “Joan of Arc” and then with “Attila”, suggesting that the musical omens of “Othello” be captured in “Macbeth”. He then gives special emphasis to dancers, «stupendous music, an act of collective skill of the orchestra». The Chorus has rehearsed for a long time with masks and is directed by Alberto Malazzi, on its first 7 December.
“Macbeth” is Verdi’s tenth opera, the first inspired by William Shakespeare, a dark Nordic story set in the eleventh century. Described as a “Scottish tragedy” by theatricals who prefer not to name it by attributing to it malicious powers, it has inspired many directors, including Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Roman Polanski.
The parterre: the president Sergio Mattarella will sit in the royal box with the president of the Senate Maria Elisabetta Casellati, the Minister of Cultural Heritage Dario Franceschini, the mayor of Milan Beppe Sala, the president of the Lombardy Region Attilio Fontana and the vice president Letizia Moratti. Excellent and pop-veined appearances: confirmed Plácido Domingo, Roberto Bolle, Giorgio Armani (who will bring still mysterious guests), Mario Monti, the artists Maurizio Cattelan, Francesco Vezzoli and Gian Maria Tosatti, Ornella Vanoni escorted by Marracash, Diodato and the judges of “X Factor ”Manuel Agnelli and Emma Marrone.
In the end, everyone at home or at small private parties: the traditional dinner at the Garden Society will not be held this year. But “we have chosen – concludes Meyer – to concentrate on the show and on the way in which the television broadcast will spread it around the world“. On Rai Play the show can be seen for 15 days, Rai Com will distribute it in cinemas, European and Asian television channels will broadcast it live and on a deferred basis.