VERDI is the one com poser who can match up to Shakespeare. Of his three Bard-based operas, “Macbeth” is perhaps the least perfect, but in some ways, his most Shakespearean.
Which may be why the Metropolitan Opera hired Adrian Noble, former head of Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company, to direct its new “Macbeth,” which bowed Oct. 22.
What might have seemed a good idea at the time wasn’t.
Noble’s staging veers between the nearly competent and the nearly ludicrous. But not all was lost.
Serbian baritone Zeljko Lucic and Ukrainian soprano Maria Guleghina made a powerful, well-matched, dark-voiced pair as the murderous Scot and his bloodthirsty, sleepwalking partner in regicide.
With his fine dark-timbred voice and his handsomely controlled anguish, Lucic suggests a man driven by forces he never quite comprehends.
This Macbeth isn’t so much dominated by his Lady Macbeth but seduced by the naked ambition she represents and he ambiguously desires.
Guleghina, despite a tendency to overplay the dramatic impact of her vibrato, violently embraces the role’s technical demands, giving us an uncontained study in wide-eyed, calculating madness.
The stalwart John Relyea makes a superb Banquo, and the somewhat raw American tenor Dmitri Pittas showed distinct promise as the vengeful Macduff.
But the singers, orchestra and conductor James Levine’s sturdily affectionate account of Verdi’s dark and thorny score were tripped up at every turn by the staging.
What can you do with a Witches Chorus looking like bedraggled kids after a Rod Stewart concert, with the deposed Malcolm’s avenging English army apparently allied with the Green Party? They wave green flags, push their solitary Jeep to save gas and, though equipped with automatic rifles, fight with bayonets.
And why make Lady Macbeth simulate sleepwalking by tiptoeing across a chain of chairs? Final tally: Music, 8; staging, zero.
MACBETH
Metropolitan Opera, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center. (212) 362-6000. Next performance tomorrow. Other performances through May 17.