Met Opera Opens With Verdi's 'Macbeth', and Italy Reads the Season Abroad

The Metropolitan Opera opened its new season with Verdi's 'Macbeth', the New York Times reported on Wednesday, in a production directed by Louisa Proske and set in a postapocalyptic landscape. The paper's review praised the baritone Quinn Kelsey, who it said 'commandingly charts each step in Macbeth's decline'. A separate Times item described the opening night as a gathering of luminaries.

The choice of Verdi for the season's first night is the detail that travels. 'Macbeth' is the earliest of the composer's Shakespeare operas and one of the works through which foreign houses most often introduce Italian repertoire to a general audience — a nineteenth-century score, a familiar plot, and a title that does not depend on a star soprano to carry the evening.

That the Times filed two pieces — one on the social occasion, one on the performance — is a measure of how the American press still treats an Italian opera premiere as an event with both a cultural and a civic dimension. The review's focus on the baritone rather than the production concept suggests the evening's success rested on singing rather than on the dystopian reading.