When Lady Macbeth calls to table, the celebration of death and celebration of victory can no longer be distinguished.
Photo: © Eike Walkenhorst
“Tu, notte, ne avvolgi / di tenebre immota,” sings Felicia Moore in a powerful voice at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Yes, the night, it wraps itself in motionless darkness. This is hardly ever as clear in the theater as in Comrade Shakespeare’s night and shadow play “Macbeth.” As is well known, Verdi made an easily digestible opera out of it. This was now re-staged in Berlin by Marie-Ève Signeyrole, while Enrique Mazzola took his place behind the desk.
Signeyrole sets the material in the not too distant future and allows artificial intelligence to appear as a bearer of power. Before a flesh-and-blood human enters the scene, an Avator speaks from the screen to the audience. “Is that part of the piece?” my companion asks me to my right. “Such nonsense!” the unknown man to my left said, as if in response.
The temporal translation of this timeless piece about the fury of advancement and fear of decline, tyrannicide and murderous tyrants, “regime change” and the perceived claim to power is not quite convincing. In terms of visual aesthetics, the production remains undecided, while musically you get your money’s worth. The fact that the witch choir consists of swiping servants of high technology is a directorial idea without consequence. Text projections show that the power struggle in Scotland is not least due to raw material deposits in the North Sea. Even without this type of information, the audience would certainly have been able to follow. So a lot of fuss obscures the view of the essentials.
Genosse Shakespeare
As you like it: Every two weeks, Erik Zielke writes about great tragedies, political smear theater and fools from the past and present. He finds inspiration in his comrade from Stratford-upon-Avon.
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The setting imposed on the production (and also effective) in the digital age does not undermine Shakespeare’s basic dramatic approach: we are dealing with a bloody piece of literature – and the blood that has been shed will lead to further bloodshed. The blood flows even in clinical times. The night is enveloped in darkness. Or as Comrade Brecht trilled on stage a few centuries after Shakespeare: “And you see those in the light / You don’t see those in the dark.”
And doesn’t Verdi’s bright, almost gentle composition paradoxically obscure the bloody events. The touching music acts like the civilized soundtrack to a power struggle that is based on the rule of the strongest.
While “Macbeth” is on the program at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the audience of the political world theater out there can also hear civilized accompanying music. As always, we can only guess what goes on in the dark. The incumbent US President Biden, who wants to rigorously create some foreign policy realities in the last few meters, and the future President Trump, who is already preparing to dismantle democratic standards, meet in the White House to shake hands. Wasn’t Macbeth similarly friendly towards King Macduff?
Angela Merkel lets us know in her liberal democratic memoirs that she simply followed the rules of protocol on her way to the top. If you keep your eyes closed in the German Opera, like my neighbor on the left, you can hear the graceful beauty of rule, you can’t see the history of violence.