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Macbeth State Opera Vienna - Wien Thu 24.Sep 2026 19:00 replace me !Macbeth State Opera Vienna - Wien Sun 27.Sep 2026 18:30 replace me !Macbeth State Opera Vienna - Wien Thu 01.Oct 2026 19:00 replace me !Macbeth State Opera Vienna - Wien Sun 04.Oct 2026 19:00 replace me !Macbeth, army commander in the service of King Duncan, is prophesied by three witches that he himself will become king. But the price is high,
and his bloody path of self-destruction soon begins. Urged on by the ambitious Lady Macbeth, he commits murder and treason to secure his power. But his actions catch up with him when he is forced to face off against his adversary Macduff and an insurgent army. The tragedy reaches its climax in a devastating battle that seals Macbeth's downfall and makes Malcolm, the murdered king's son, the new king of Scotland.
Barrie Kosky's theater often touches, but sometimes it grips by showing the familiar - the world, life, relationships between people - broken in such a way that it remains shockingly recognizable. In his Macbeth production at the Staatsoper, the director creates a darkness that provides additional density and results in the invisibility of all the characters.
"This darkness doesn't just come from Shakespeare's play or Verdi's score, it is the play itself. A darkness from which one cannot escape, which dominates the scene from the very first moment. I would say with regard to Shakespeare that no other of his works is so strongly characterized by it. And Verdi distilled the essence of it: an incredible, almost claustrophobic nihilism," says the director.
For this production, we recommend a minimum age of 16.
The variety of this opera and the dangerous beauty of some scenes are fascinating, even after repeated listenings. Already in the Preludio and in the Introduction of Act 1, everything is touched upon with a heavy sense of meaning: the dark, unison F minor melody in 6/8' time, the constantly recurring, piercing march-like dotting in the brass, the woodwind-influenced witches' laughter, the ominously repeated downward 32nd-note figure in the strings, which will reappear in the murder scene, as well as Lady Macbeth's elegiac sleepwalker melody. Even if the musical language has changed considerably over the last 170 years: Certain things such as Verdi's musical and motivic economy, his instrumental clarity in the interplay between the orchestra and the singers and his unerring sense of how to build up a dramaturgically concise internal tension are as fascinating today as they were then (Johannes Maria Staud)One of the reasons why Macbeth was long overshadowed by many other Verdi operas was not only the rather unusual character of the work, but also the difficulty of adequately casting the two main roles. Lady Macbeth in particular, which is not as dramatically developed in Shakespeare as in Verdi, is one of the most difficult roles in opera literature. It demands a "prima donna assoulta" that is rarely found in any generation. Famous in this connection with Macbeth is a letter from Verdi to the librettist Salvadore Cammarano (1848), in which he wishes Lady Macbeth to have "una voce aspra, soffocata, cupa" ("a sharp, stifled, dark voice"). Verdi was concerned with a clear departure from the vocal-aesthetic ideal of pure, beautiful singing, even if he continued to build on the principles of the bel canto of his musical predecessors. (Michael Kraus)Order your tickets for the Vienna State Opera and book your tickets now at viennaticket.at.
(Source: wiener-staatsoper.at)
