Verdi’s Macbeth’s premieres in Florence

Shakespeare adaptation marked change in composer’s style

The poster advertising the first
performance of the opera

Giuseppe Verdi’s operatic interpretation of the Shakespeare play Macbeth was performed for the first time on this day in 1847.

The premiere took place at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, where the composer, already gaining fame at 33 years old but with his most successful years still to come, was under contract to the impresario Alessandro Lanari.

After his success with Nabucco, his third opera, which featured the great chorus, Va, pensiero, in 1842, Verdi rapidly found himself in demand. Macbeth would be his tenth opera, his eighth in just five years. Lanari, confident that anything bearing the up-and-coming maestro’s name would sell tickets, was happy to leave the choice of work to Verdi himself, and so did not give him a particular brief.

The theatre was known for its refined acoustics and had a reputation for supporting innovative work and Verdi, who already felt his artistic freedom was being compromised by a need to produce commercially viable output, saw an opportunity to shake off at least some constraints.

Having revered the English dramatist William Shakespeare from an early age, Verdi chose Macbeth for a number of reasons. First, he felt the nature of the play would allow him to focus on the drama of the story, rather than adhering strictly to bel canto convention, which demanded a structure built around vocal highlights, sometimes at the expense of realism and depth.

The play had been in Verdi’s mind for some time. What convinced him that the moment to work with it had arrived was the availability of Felice Varesi, a baritone renowned for his dramatic intensity, to cast in the title role.

He faced some challenges in bringing the project to fruition in the way he intended. There were disagreements with his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, over how to convey the tone Verdi desired. A number of times, the composer asked his friend, Andrea Maffei, another librettist, to provide input as well, even rewriting parts of Piave's libretto.

His leading lady, the soprano Marianna Barbieri-Nini, who had worked with him on his sixth opera, I due Foscari, had to be coached not to infuse her performance with the vocal polish usually required. Keen to emphasise character. Verdi demanded that her Lady Macbeth be “ugly and evil.”

When Verdi’s Macbeth was unveiled, audiences were sceptical about the lack of a central romance and some critics were unsettled by its darkness. Structured in four acts, with the emphasis on Lady Macbeth’s ruthless ambition, Macbeth’s psychological unravelling and the three witches - represented in Verdi’s interpretation by three choral groups - as a driving force of fate, it was nonetheless deemed a success, if not the crowd-pleasing blockbuster Lanari might have been hoping for.

Felice Varesi, the first to
sing the title role

The Florentine audience, who were seen as traditionally more restrained, say, than those in Milan, respected it as a considered, serious and innovative work, if a little unusual. It toured Italy, reportedly being performed at 21 venues around the country, before making its United States debut in New York in 1850, and its United Kingdom debut in Manchester in 1860, although it was never seen as a runaway hit.

The composer himself was said to regard it as his greatest achievement to that point. Later he would talk about it in terms of marking the start of his move away from what he spoke of as his “galley years” as a composer, when he likened himself to a “galley slave”, endlessly under pressure in terms of workload, deadlines, and artistic constraints, as if chained to an oar.

Indeed, Macbeth is now seen as a landmark moment in Verdi’s career, signalling a transition towards the artistic depth that would set him apart as the greatest composer of Italy’s operatic history, placing him above even Giacomo Puccini and Gioachino Rossini as titans of the genre.

By the time he produced the substantially revised version of Macbeth he presented in Paris in 1865, the version generally performed today, he had written Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, Simon Boccanegra, Un ballo in maschera and La forza del destino, transforming his reputation from that of rising star to a creator of genuine masterpieces.

Verdi’s reverence towards Shakespeare never diminished, even though he would not return to the English playwright until the end of his career, signing off with Otello in 1887 and Falstaff, adapted from The Merry Wives of Windsor, in 1893.

It is thought this was down to a number of factors, among them the conventions of Italian opera in the 19th century, with star singers expecting showcase roles and impresarios wanting traditional theatre-filling melodrama.

Verdi also had to feel artistically confident that he was able to do a Shakespeare play full justice and be supported by a librettist who could do likewise. Until his collaboration with Arrigo Boito, who worked with him on Otello and Falstaff, such a librettist never appeared.

The Teatro della Pergola, the historic
theatre in the centre of Florence

Travel tip:

Florence’s Teatro della Pergola, where Verdi’s Macbeth was performed before an audience for the first time, was inaugurated in December 1656. It is one of Italy’s oldest and most historically significant theatres, celebrated as the first substantial example of what came to be known as an Italian‑style theatre, with tiers of private boxes, a shift away from the traditional design based on a semi-circle of decreasing steps. It is said to have taken its name from the grape pergola that used to stand nearby. Built under the patronage of Cardinal Giancarlo de’ Medici, it was designed by the architect Ferdinando Tacca, quickly becoming a centre of Florentine cultural life. It was officially opened during the carnival of 1657, with the world premiere of the comic opera Il podestà di Colognole by Jacopo Melani. The genre of melodrama, which became the fundamental currency of opera in Italy, is said to have been born at the Teatro della Pergola, which hosted the premieres of two operas by Gaetano Donizetti, Parisina d'Este and Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, in 1833 and 1834. The Pergola also appears as a footnote in another famous story, it being the theatre at which Antonio Meucci, the Italian said to have been the real inventor of the telephone, was working as a stage technician when he constructed a prototype acoustic telephone to communicate between the stage and the theatre’s control room. Located on Via della Pergola, the theatre is a short walk from Piazza del Duomo, and close to landmarks such as the Palazzo Bargello and the Basilica di Santa Croce.

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The Baratta Salsamenteria Storica in Busseto, which
celebrates the career of a reputed former customer

Travel tip:

Giuseppe Verdi came from Busseto, a town in Emilia-Romagna about 45km (27 miles) from Parma, 35km (21 miles) from Piacenza and 25km (15 miles) from Cremona. The area has plenty to offer Verdi fans, who can visit the house where he was born, in 1813, in the village of Le Roncole, and the churches of Santa Maria degli Angeli and San Michele Arcangelo, where he played the organ. Visitors can also admire the Palazzo Orlandi, a beautiful house on Via Roma that Verdi bought in 1845, which he shared with his future wife, the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, from 1849 to 1851. Verdi is said to have composed Luisa Miller, Stiffelio, Rigoletto and Il trovatore while living there. Look out also for the Rocca dei Marchesi Pallavicino, on Piazza Giuseppe Verdi, which houses the Teatro Giuseppe Verdi. In 1913, Arturo Toscanini conducted a performance of Falstaff there in celebration of the centenary of Verdi's birth and to raise funds for what is now a large monument of the seated composer located in the piazza. Visitors to the small town, which has a population of around 6,700 residents, are often drawn to the Baratta Salsamenteria Storica, a tavern and salumeria on Via Roma where Verdi was once reputed to be a regular customer. The tavern specialises in charcuterie boards loaded with local hams, salami and cheeses, which customers eat with chunks of country bread, washed down with red lambrusco wine, traditionally drunk from a bowl rather than a glass.