Phillip Rhodes as Macbeth and Amanda Echalaz as Lady Macbeth. Photo / Grant Triplow
Phillip Rhodes as Macbeth and Amanda Echalaz as Lady Macbeth. Photo / Grant Triplow
The foreboding walls of Netia Jones' set for her production of Verdi's Macbeth suggested grim times ahead, atmospheric orchestration subtly tinting the shadings of white, grey and black on stage. Then, synchronised to a massive orchestral chord, a splat of red blood seeped over the gauze projection screen.
New ZealandOpera has enlisted one of today's most innovative directors in Jones and this effective melodramatic touch was not necessarily typical of what followed.
The opening witches' chorus was almost catatonic in its lack of energy, the women dressed as if they might have strayed in from a starchy secretarial conference. Jones may argue with good cause that cackling crones are a misogynist concept, but this was a bland, pallidly sung launch for an evening of all-encompassing evil.
Evil would be evoked, however, through powerhouse performances and the director's ingenious video projections, which did occasionally overshadow players.
The witches' chorus, from left Wade Kernot as Banquo and Phillip Rhodes as Macbeth. Photo / Grant Triplow
Phillip Rhodes has the personality and dramatic chops to make Macbeth spring to life in a bare audition room. Tonight, he played the anti-hero as a caged tiger, pacing his palace, charting his crumbling decline in magnificent song.
Verdi stated that Lady Macbeth should not be beautifully sung, stipulating harsh, stifled and hollow vocal tones. But did this really sanction some of Amanda Echalaz's raw upper register and flailing vibrato?
Yet when the soprano relaxed in her final sleepwalking scene, she invested her monstrous character with an almost touching vulnerability. This scene was also one of many showcases for conductor Brad Cohen and Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
Phillip Rhodes as Macbeth and Amanda Echalaz as Lady Macbeth. Photo / Grant Triplow
Wade Kernot was a noble Banquo and Jared Holt delivered a showstopper in Macduff's fourth act aria.
Jones' brilliantly paced and placed banquet scene, breaking out of monochromatic gloom, benefitted from the contribution of a lusty Chapman Tripp chorus. The singers' later lament for their oppressed land would have had much appreciated political overtones for Verdi's audiences and, indeed, has resonance today.
