(Photo: Raftermen Photography)

The Atlanta Opera (TAO) thrives and even expands while many classical music organizations contract. Their spring mainstage offerings began this month with Verdi’s “Macbeth. ” But not before the announcement of their 2025-26 season, including what few companies can afford to do—“Götterdämmerung,” completing an entire “Ring” cycle. Their season also includes Philip Glass’ “La Belle et la Bête,” and a musical theater partnership with Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre. In this era in which many companies repeatedly grind “Carmen,” “The Barber of Seville,” and the same three Puccini operas into a fine paste, one can see something different at TAO, reinforced by the otherworldly fundraising game of General Director, Tomer Zvulun.

TAO continued their 2024-25 season unified by the durable monomyth, the Hero’s Journey, with Verdi’s early, uneven but magnificent masterwork. If you know Zvulun, you’ll know that “Macbeth” sails squarely down the center of his strike zone. It lends itself to a combination of youthful vigor, controlled mayhem, and a palpable excitement to be shared with the audience. Noting that “Verdi’s Scottish Play” adds the pursuit of power to make a trifecta with “opera’s two most durable obsessions, love and death,” Zvulun characterized the work as a “true masterpiece.” TAO’s new production makes a strong case for that status.

Verdi & Piave’s Scottish Play

Like its source, there’s no escaping the peculiarity of “Macbeth” (1847), which extends to the music that The Bard lacks. Is Macbeth a bel canto opera? Sort of. The leading lady proves nearly impossible to cast, much like Abigaile in “Nabucco,” perhaps a dramatic coloratura, who must bring a sizable instrument capable of acrobatic agilitá more easily found in a smaller voice. One of the twentieth century’s greatest exponents of Lady Macbeth, Shirley Verrett, did all that, with a zwischenfach mezzo-ish color to boot. And then there’s that high D in the sleepwalking scene. Her music, and everyone else’s, sounds a lot like Verdi’s bel canto elder Donizetti for much of the first two acts, or like Verdi’s previous outings, “Nabucco” (1842), “I Lombardi” (1843), and “Ernani” (1844). Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” (1835) clearly influenced “Macbeth,” but Verdi’s take on Scottish Gothic displays rougher edges.
Then in midstream, orchestral colors darken and form departs the bel canto era, as the opera starts acting like middle Verdi or later. You’ve probably heard “Macbeth” many fewer times than its fellow late-late-late bel canto cousin, “Il Trovatore” (1853) and the other two mid-Verdi warhorses “Rigoletto” (1851) and “La Traviata” (1853), which is why encountering it again requires too little defamiliarization for you to fail to be struck anew by the opera’s oddness. TAO hadn’t mounted “Macbeth” since the 1990s, long before the company’s move to Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center.

Stars, hide your fires / Let not light see my black and deep desires

TAO leaned hard into the Gothic fever dream elements of “Macbeth,” and Zvulun mentioned in pre-curtain remarks that some time had elapsed since the company performed anything in the horror genre. (Few operas populate the horror genre, anyway, but TAO staged Paul Moravec’s “The Shining” in September 2023. TAO’s always-impressive fight director, Ran Arthur Braun, skillfully underlined horrific elements with verisimilitude not seen in much of the flaccid swordplay we encounter in most stagings of, say, Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliette” or Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” But the towering performance of baritone Michael Mayes in the title role consistently fused with horror another dramatic genre.

Consider for a moment: is Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” kind of, sort of…an ancestor of Noir? After two acts of watching Mayes, the most disheveled, most tortured, and seemingly most buffeted by circumstance of the characters—even though others met gruesome deaths before him—during intermission I texted the Shakespeare scholar in the English department where I work. Dr Kurt Schreyer responded in the affirmative to the Noir question, offering a half dozen bulleted checkmarks.

Macbeth:

• is a nihilistic, disaffected veteran of war,
• who believes the Man is keeping him down,
• and is induced into committing a crime
• which snowballs, leading to further seemingly ineluctable crimes,
• thereby intensifying his paranoid hallucinations,
• while he’s persistently goaded by an ambitious, attractive femme fatale.

Fortified for the second half of the opera, I couldn’t unsee the Noirish contour of Mayes’ dramatic performance, which—since Macbeth is the only character who spies the ghosts—unified horror and realism. The visuals didn’t look Noir-ish, more like tartaned Horror. But the leads’ behavior was pure Noir style. Horrific events assail the Noir antihero, but the genre usually grounds itself in a gritty neorealism. And nothing in Zvulun and Gregory Luis Boyle’s staging seemed to indicate that Banquo and Duncan’s ghosts weren’t real; the other courtiers just didn’t see them. (However paranormal events work, it’s not hard to believe that ghosts could target who can and cannot perceive them).

Underscoring that realism, Lady Macbeth arranged a group photo, on film, to close Act two’s banquet. The night before the “Macbeth” prima, Zvulun’s familiar “La Bohème” staging opened at Dallas Opera. In that show, the six friends pose at Café Momus for a photograph, which returns projected on scenery in the fourth act, physicalizing the group’s loss between December and April just as much as does Mimi’s expired body. Photography serves as a coping mechanism for human beings who strain against the fallibility of their memory. Less important than whether photography properly simulates human beings’ optic vision is its power to convince them that anterior events really occurred. We really did make it to the Grand Canyon that summer. It really happened. Lady Macbeth really did ascend to queen consort—we have a photo. At the Act two curtain, a militaristic publicity photo of Mayes looking atypically sheveled accompanied the fade to black, surrounded by six meter-tall Mussolini-esque marquee posters advertising his highness.

Makeup & Costume Details

In the title role, baritone Michael Mayes proved the perfect lead for such a production. His cosmetics, courtesy of Melanie Steele’s wig and makeup design, proceeded from haggard in Act one to nearly-exhumed in Act four. From the [staged] overture on, he held his head in pain, as Maestro Iván López-Reynoso’s orchestra unwound the lilting, wilting sleepwalking theme. Throughout, Mayes grabbed his face so many times one wondered if the character suffered a physical ailment too, such as migraines, or shell shock. He and bass Morris Robinson as Banquo dispensed with some enemies in an initial battle beneath the main set’s wraparound stairways. The women’s chorus, twenty strong, bubbled and toiled and troubled as though they were a cauldron themselves, as they hauled away copious corpses. Indeed, Rolando Salazar’s chorus augmented the entire production—early Verdi relies on chorus so heavily.

Mayes’ sound, securely woven browns and greys, achieved pure Verdi baritone by his second scene, hefty, with pleasing overtones. What he achieved dramatically requires great skill. His character writhed, shuffled, huffed, evidently never wishing to be wherever he was, especially at court. To act sexy and then sing sexily, as does Carmen, is one thing, or to act mad and then sing ludicrous fioriture during a mad scene as does Lucia. To act as though you don’t want to be king but to sing regally at the same time makes another task entirely.

Vergogna, Signor!

Where “Macbeth” doesn’t act like a proto-Noir is in its liberal deployment of ghosts. Act two’s banquet scene took place at a panoramic table groaning under the weight of all the wax fruit in the kingdom, as alcohol flowed freely about the gathering. Macbeth appeared to have pre-gamed the party. David Silverstein’s late Duncan and Morris Robinson’s late Banquo accosted him, Robinson pacing calmly with an arrow still stuck in the wound in his sternum. Crazier yet, in Act three, after Hensley Peters’ formidable Crowned Child Apparition declaimed a cowering Mayes square into the floorboards with the Birnam Wood prophecy, eight thrones representing the Macbeths’ homicide victims descended from the rafters, eight ghosts soon assembling behind them, all in alabaster elven grandeur. Mayes attempted to stab his juvenile tormentor, with the success you’d expect when plunging a blade into someone immaterial. Making ghosts un-cheesy is difficult, and the production nailed every expression of the paranormal.

After a gorgeous, regretful, morose “Pietà, Rispetto, Amore,” Mayes’ unhinged antihero met his reward in Act four, grabbing the dagger-wielding arm of Won Whi Choi’s Macduff and stabbing himself in another erotic embrace, before collapsing and similarly forcing the rest of his dogpiling attackers and their phallic blades into his person. In print, this sounds like a lot; in person, it worked superbly. After his death, Malcolm and Macduff’s crew shredded the marquee poster into confetti.

I didn’t get the money, and I didn’t get the woman

The relationship of the leads unfolded as another Noir-ish dynamic of Zvulun and Boyle’s direction. Other than sharing sexualized thrills together while stabbing people, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s affinity for each other seemed unclear. One is reminded of Roger Ebert’s take on Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis and Fred MacMurray’s Walter, in their mis-footed love affair in “Double Indemnity” (1944).

“…the enigma that keeps it new, is what these two people really think of one another. They strut through the routine of a noir murder plot, with the tough talk and the cold sex play. But they never seem to really like each other all that much, and they don’t seem that crazy about the money, either. What are they after?”

Substitute the Scottish crown for a life insurance payout, and we’ve a similar dynamic. Sarah Gartland’s Lady Macbeth began Act one, scene two, bidding farewell to a stillborn child before a cavernous bassinet stroller. The baby long gone, she’d later enter the sleepwalking scene in a white nightgown bloodstained in patterns consistent with a traumatic childbirth, her face and arms soaked in clear liquid as though amniotic fluid had spread everywhere. She transitioned jarringly smoothly to the letter scene. Thereafter, her character seemed aroused by egging Macbeth on, but she’d moved to damage control by the banquet—in a Noir-ish coverup mode as Macbeth nearly told on himself. The two had clearly trauma-bonded; Mayes spooning Gartland in fetal position beneath the throne in Act four made a superb touch. And the killings that led to the crown looked far more exciting to them than installing themselves in high office.

Look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under ‘t

Soprano Sarah Gartland, debuting at TAO, acted effectively and sang gorgeously, radiating a too-wholesome beauty of a Michelle Monaghan sort, sufficiently alluring to induce her husband to waste some Scottish nobles. The question we must pose is whether her instrument slots appropriately in Lady Macbeth’s fach. To her great credit, she sang with her own voice, never pushing. But her voice lacks the size for this strange role. Mayes overpowered her vocally in some duets. Her recent credits vary in fach, ranging from Humperdinck’s Gretel, to Rusalka, to Korngold’s Marietta, to Salome. At times she could scarcely be heard from orchestra seats. Fortunately, Verdi knew how to get the orchestra out of singers’ ways better than some later composers, although momentary thunder gathers in the sleepwalking scene.

That caveat aside, Gartland succeeded in the role in every other capacity, subtle when needed, scenery-devouring when called for. Rather than her reading aloud Macbeth’s missive in the letter scene, Mayes read it in a voiceover on loudspeakers. Her “Vieni, t’affretta!” demonstrated ample dynamic control within her voice’s natural compass, and sufficient mastery of bel canto vocal gymnastics. She gave a very theatrical “La luce langue,” starting with a smooch for Mayes and backed by a red splash behind her atop the stairs, and a blue one below, behind the spotlit throne, the background like a Rothko painting that had sprung a leak. All of Gartland’s costumery, courtesy of Robert Israel, looked magnificent, Act two’s gown checkered in black chess queen idiom, acres of fabric about her slender frame, physicalizing the extent of her ambition.

Gartland achieved maximal dramatic effect in the sleepwalking scene, one of Verdi and Piave’s greatest coups de théâtre. Though she wrung her hands, “via ti dico o maladetta / out, out damned spot” lands harder when the soprano’s dress features a basketball-sized uterine bloodstain. Gartland made her character’s lost toehold in reality seem believable, down to the triple-pianissimo high D, morendo. Mezzo-soprano Aubrey Odle’s Lady-in-waiting and bass Luke Harnish’s Doctor provided sufficient backing for this weirdest of scenes. At the conclusion, Mayes spooned Gartland on the floor, beneath the throne, under which she had crawled. He sang “Pietà, Rispetto, Amore,” holding her limp arm, before she rose to embrace him one last time, and then wandered off stage left to die.

O treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!

TAO has secured the funds to luxury-cast supporting roles, and in his usual voice-of-God mode, bass Morris Robinson’s Banquo gave such distinguished affect that it threw Mayes’ Macbeth’s brooding anguish into further relief. He played Banquo in a no-nonsense fashion. Too, Robinson’s past as a football player came in handy for the fight scenes, as he rag-dolled several attackers. Banquo’s big number “Come dal ciel precipita” lands in Robinson’s wheelhouse, requiring both power and lyricism. He delivered, with a gorgeous high register featuring a nearly tenorial ping, and that immersive timbre of his that sounds like a grizzly bear gently snuggling a kitten. Zvulun likes casting children aged appropriately to broadcast childlike vulnerability, rather than seven years older than their characters as on a network television show. Young Kaden Taylor’s Fleance barely escaped his father’s assassination, and participated in a heartwarming high five with Robinson at curtain call.

TAO cast well the other male featured rôles too. Baritone Demetrious Sampson Jr, like Robinson a Georgia native, brought a youthful vigor to Malcolm. And tenor Won Whi Choi sang Macduff’s aria “Ah la paterna mano” with a plangent timbre and genuine sorrow at the deaths of his children and those of others. They strutted triumphantly over Macbeth’s corpse at the finale, backed by a full-throated chorus.

TAO executed all aspects of the production well, as we’ve come to expect, especially, Driscoll Otto and Andrei Borges’ lighting design, which looked great in the theater and even better on the TAO Film Studio’s livestream. Gone are the days of Gil Wechsler at a shadowy 1980s Met. Audience members could see well almost all the time, which made the darkest moments really pop. Few American houses these days compete with Atlanta where projections are concerned. Storms, mists, cauldron steam, bloodbaths, ghostly plasma: countless effects purposely blurred the line between live theater and cinema, again drawing an interesting contrast with America’s foremost opera house. Various directors photograph performances in “The Met Live in HD” series sort of like a sporting event where the game happens to be an opera. But TAO’s Felipe Barral, increasingly, shoots performances more like a docudrama. It’s impressive to take in an early performance live, fly home, catch the livestreamed third performance, and encounter a reasonable fusion of the live and Memorex experiences.

“We humbly take our cues from these masters.”

Zvulun’s above sentence from his director’s note in the program could be applied to numerous recent TAO productions. As you view multiple shows, you realize something really special is taking place in Atlanta, an optimized calibration of what critics and audience clumsily label “traditional” and “avant-garde” approaches to staging opera.

Though leaving behind a parochial dedication to “the composer’s intentions” and other reactionary postures taken by those who want opera to look like it did in 1970—readers will know some of these people—TAO manages to honor these repertory works in ways that make sure the staging doesn’t get in the libretto’s way. Their stagings refrain from obscuring the work for novice audience members—the people we desperately need to buy tickets. But simultaneously, as I’ve taken to telling acquaintances in lobbies at intermission in Atlanta, and in Dallas and Seattle, Zvulun’s productions always make a veteran operagoer recognize that they’ve never seen a particular thing done this particular way, at least thrice per performance, always provoking thought. With repertory favorites, there’s a tightrope to walk between an enervated traditionalism and regie-theatrical nonsense. Your reviewer haven’t seen Atlanta get this balance wrong yet. Stay tuned for the third episode of their new “Ring” cycle in Spring 2025, “Siegfried,” surely the hero’s-journey-est opera ever written.