Well before the play’s first murder, Lady Macbeth establishes her place among Shakespeare’s most treacherous characters with this invocation: Come, you spiritsThat tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,And fill me from the crown to the toe top-fullOf direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,That no compunctious visitings of... Continue Reading →
North Carolina soprano Jill Gardner’s musical ancestry and training led her to killing the role of Lady Macbeth. On Friday the 13th, Opera Tampa unloads quite the murderfest with their debut performance of Verdi’s Macbeth. The bloody story of a Scottish nobleman’s immoral rise to power, Macbeth was for Shakespeare, and here, for Verdi, really... Continue Reading →
Giuseppe Verdi’s version of “more cowbell” looks something like an entire chorus of witches in Macbeth versus the Bard’s three. In 1597, King James of Scotland wrote a work of what he considered to be definitive scholarship: Daemonologie, a paper on witchcraft. James, widely regarded by self and others to be an expert on the... Continue Reading →