Macbeth/English Touring Opera review: Spooky sisters stoke up the cauldron

For centuries, composers have been drawn to Shakespeare like moths to a flame.

There are at least 400 operas based on his plays, and more will undoubtedly follow. Needless to say, I haven’t seen all of them — no one has. Of those I have seen, Verdi’s Macbeth is one of the few that comes close to matching the original’s power, partly thanks to the composer’s liking for an element of Shakespearean vulgarity, a bracing contrast to the bleak chill of the story.

While many Shakespeare operas tamper liberally with the original Shakespeare — the happy ending imposed by the censors in Rossini’s Otello just one example, Verdi sticks closely to the play’s narrative while filleting it for maximum musical impact. This is 19th-century Italian opera at its most intense.James Dacre’s new production for English Touring Opera (ETO) ensures that the opera hits home by being sung in English. The translation, by the late Andrew Porter, is something of a masterpiece in its own right. Drawing heavily on Shakespeare’s text, it manages the difficult job of making it fit the Italian music perfectly, and the cast gets most of its words across — not always the case when opera is sung in English.

The opera is touring alongside works by Mozart and Rossini as part of ETO’s Kings and Queens season. In Dacre’s staging, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth don’t look particularly regal; thoroughly modern wealth rather than title gives them their power, and they’re not afraid to use it. Their realm is a kind of fortified mansion, well stocked with modern weaponry and under constant surveillance. Frankie Bradshaw’s designs efficiently create the different spaces the action requires, without being straightforwardly pictorial.

The action moves swiftly and Dacre knows when to treat the text literally and when to take an imaginative step sideways. Verdi gives us not just three Witches but a whole chorus line of them; Dacre makes them nursing nuns, which adds an extra dimension of spookiness to their machinations. This was the first night of the tour, and while the chorus sang throughout with fierce commitment, its movements felt regimented. As the production makes its way round the country, it will no doubt develop a looser, more naturally theatrical feel.

The ETO orchestra is smaller than you’d get in a full-scale opera house, but conductor Gerry Cornelius ensures that added focus and surefooted pace compensate for any weight-loss. It is, though, the singers who must carry the piece, and particularly the Macbeths. Grant Doyle’s voice is at first somewhat blunt and plain, but he finds real depth of feeling in time for Macbeth’s despairing final moments. In Madeleine Pierard, the production has a Lady Mac who towers over her husband, both dramatically and physically.

Her voice may not quite manage the “devilish” tone that Verdi specified, but there is beauty, grace and just a hint of madness in her performance. As Verdi intended, she makes her character the pivot on which the opera balances, albeit precariously.

Touring until May 31 (englishtouringopera.org.uk)