THE OPERAS OF VERDI MACBETH

returned into step with his previous self. The climactic phrase of each version Once more the two versions begin to diverge wide! y as Macbeth comes to
gives a splendid illustration of how his melodic style developed over the years: himsel£ The Florence score wound up with a cabaletta of a most unusual cut
(Vada infiamme). The design might be described thus: a (A minor), b (A major),
192 c (episode in A minor), b (A moJor) and coda. Not only does the line lie between A
a)
Pill mosso
and F above the stave; the baritone sings continuously. Musically it may not be
MACBETH very distinguished, but as a supreme expression of crude baritonic power it is
quite extraordinary and very fitting for one who has said 'From this moment the
!
very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand.' But it needed a
Ah: che non hai non hai tU vi ta: Ah! che non Varesi or a Ronconi to sing it at the end of a long third act; and so, if only to take
some of the weight from the baritone's shoulders, Verdi dropped the aria in
favour of a duettino. ('I don't find it illogical that Lady, intent as she is on keeping
an eye on her husband, should have discovered where he is.')* No sooner then has
Macbeth returned to his senses and willed that ' ... this pernicious hour [ stand aye
accursed in the calendar' than the herald announces: 'The Queen!' Macbeth
recounts the prophecies over a recitative played tremolo sui ponticello. Lady

tronco
~-.., Macbeth punctuates each one with a mere 'Segui' ('Continue') and when he tells
her that Banquo' s descendants shall reign after him, she bursts out in terrible fury-
~- I
'Lies! Lies! Death to the evil brood!' Macbeth declares his murderous intentions;
and Lady Macbeth welcomes the revival of his courage in a long swooping
hai non hai_ non hai_ tu vi - ta:
cadential phrase such as she has already uttered in La luce langue which leads straight
into the formal duet (Ora di morte e di vendetta), a paean of vengeance not unlike

...... ., the duet of Lysiart and Eglantine in Euryanthe or of Ortrud and Telramund in
Lohengrin, though Verdi could not have heard either opera at the time. It is a case
in which the departure from Shakespeare is justified in terms of opera. Psychologi-
' cally it is all wrong. If Macbeth needed no goading at the start of Act II he needs
it even less now. At this stage in the drama Lady Macbeth is a spent force-quite
b) how spent will appear in the next act. It is utterly inappropriate to give her this
MACBETH
new access of strength; and it would be fatal to the dramatic balance in a spoken
play. But in this duet the two characters ar< in equilibrium. Its form suggests a
compression of the similar duet for unequal voices in which one repeats the other's
ah: che non hai tu vi-ta,non hai tu vi-ta,non,hai,non hai tu vi-ta:
music at a different pitch. The imitation is confined to single phrases, which are
increasingly telescoped as each singer presses harder on the other's heels. There is a
hushed episode in B flat major and the imitation is resumed at still closer intervals
culminating in a variant of Lady Macbeth's introductory cadential phrase. A rapid
coda plunging from major to minor and back again brings the act to an exciting
finish. The entire duet shows that one of the lessons that Verdi had learned in the
last eighteen years was how to make his orchestral bass lines move.

At the news that Banquo' s progeny will live Macbeth faints. Once again the lines
which announce an 'antic round' are Middleton's not Shakespeare's, and the ACT IV
dance of aerial. spirits another interpolation. The 'cora e ballabile' with its promi-
nent harp part (Ondine e silfidi) is palpably early Verdi,* and first cousin to the Scene a deserted place on the borders of England and Scotland. In the
1:

dance of Druidesses from Attila. For Paris the composer merely embellished the
final cadence of the voices with new flute and violin obbligati and added a longish
instrumental coda featuring :i countermclody in the cellos and a good many trills
in the flut~.
* Toye (p. 277) and Hughes (p. 67) ascribe it wrongly to the later version.
distance Birnam Forest.
Scottish geography has been rationalized here to allow for an amalgamation of
two important scenes-Shakespeare's IV, iii, and V, iv. There is no time for· the
long colloquy of Malcolm and Macduff about Scotland's future ruler, nor for
*Letter to L. Escudier, Jan. 1865. Copialettere, pp. 452-4.

304 305
 THE OPERAS OF VERDI
MACBETH
Lennox to break to MacduJf the news that his wife and children have been mur- 194
dered. But the woes of Scotland under tyranny, the 'new sorrows' that 'strike Andante sostenuto
heaven on the face, that it resounds [ as if it felt with Scotland, and yell' d out [like SOLI SOP.. . r"ISSimO
li tf/S
syllabte of dolour' can be powerfully depicted in a chotallament. For his original ~
setting of Patria Oppressa Verdi had in mind a chorus on the lines of 'Va pensiero'
or '0 Signore dal tetto natio'. But he hated to repeat himself; and the melody I" D'or- fa - nel - 1re di pian- gen - ti chi lo
which finally gets under way is very. different from either. Its design is like that of ob. come ~h lamento
w#'L ~ ~ Jl.. l -~~ ~ l\

!"
Donizetti's 'Una furtiva lagrima' with its progress of minor-relative major-minor- fl.vn.1 cl.dolente ~

tonic major; and the final section could have come straight out of Bellini's Norma:
.....__.-
ppp
', _. __.... ~ I ~v '<::-"'
',t~--- str.
193
Adagio
CHORLJS PP • ' -1::::::::1/ •t::=::p -- -- ..._ ....

nes-
str. pp ..
s~ e
<)
'PO - ~hi la pro - le al ve- nir del nuo-vo so - le
SOP.2i eJl

I" ~ ~
del nuo-vo
~ -·· - -
so le

~ ~-~~ ~ ,b_ ~ ~~~~ 1-h ~ j ----,.b' 1> ~ ~ 'J~)l

..
e. ~v

I#~ ~~ J )~
/ I
[:--'
!'~,-=
" ~ ~
-- --
..

minor-major form, though distinctively coloured by solo cello and clarinet. The
This is Verdi's Risorgimentostyle at its noblest-possible in 1847, irrelevant to 1865;
maggiore section equiv-lent to 'front to front [ bring thou this fiend of Scotland
so it was replaced by a setting that is not only a masterpiece oforiginality, but also far
and myself' sounds especially beuign with its placid clarinet arpeggios.* A military
more harmonically daring that anything Verdi had yet written. The choral texture
gallop brings in a very brisk Malcolm at the head of the English troops. After
alone points forward to the Requiem and the Quattro Pezzi Sacri . .Everything about it
asking and being told the name of the near-by forest he orders his men each to
is arresting: the opening brass chorale with timpani rolls, thesustainedhollowfifths of
seize a branch and carry it in front of him. He tells Macduff to take comfort from
the second violins, the line ofpizzicato cellos and basses with its modal inflections, the
thought of vengeance; to which MacduJf replies no less pithily, 'I cannot ... he
combination of'lamenting' figures that results in ambiguities of chromatic harmony
has no children.' The compression of Shakespeare's lines is both ludicrous and
worthy ofLiszt and Wagner. Ifthe opening of the Tristan prelude poses difficulties of
ineffective; and we may just surmise that it was Verdi's memoryofhis own bereave-
harmonic analysis, what is one to make ofsuch a passage as this? (Ex. 194, opposite).
ment that made him insist on including it. The scene ends with a rousing duet and
The G sharp gives the elfect of an A flat until the C appoggiatura has resolved
chorus in which a melody begun by Malcolm and MacduJf in uuison is repeated
itsel£ The whole melody of which this is an excerpt is repeated with clearer
phrase by phrase with full chorus-an eJfect not heard since the first act of I
harmony after a dominant cadence, but darker scoring heavily coloured by low
Lombardi. t The only Parisian addition is a section in faster tempo (Frate IIi gli oppressi
trombones and cimbasso. The oboe figure rakes up the motif last heard in Alzira
corriamo a salvar) before returning to the original instrumental coda.
and to be heard again associated with the lonely grief of King Philip in Don Carlos.
•' *In a letter to L. &cudier (3 Feb. I86s, R.M.I. (1928), p. 186) Verdi speaks of having 're-
A final stroke of unorthodoxy was to make all the voices move across the tritone • touched and scored' the tenor aria. Yet the Paris MS. shows beyond all manner of doubt that
from B flat to E for the final cadence-the diabolus in musica. From here the the revisions concern the first three bars of recitative only. Otherwise the movement is identical
descent to MacduJf's aria bewailing the death of his children (Ah Ia paterna mano) in 1847 and 1865 versions. . , . .
is inevitably rather steep. For this is a very orthodox 1~47-style romanza in tIt has the additional, economic advantage of preser~nng Mac?uff s co~pr~mano status.
If he had sung a cabaletta on his own he would automatically quahfy as a pnnapal.
306
•,.
•I
THE OPERAS OF VERDI
Scene z: a room in Macbeth's castle, as in Act I
With the 'Gran Sccna del Sonnambulismo' we reach the high point of the
Florence Macbeth, a scene unique in aH Italian opera of the time. As in the duet from
Act I Verdi has had recourse to 'selective' scoring, muting the strings, cutting out
all the brighter wind instruments and using clarinet and cor anglais as obbligati.
None of this is altered in the Paris version. Like all the best things in the early
Macbeth it is laid out on an unusually large scale. The scene is set by Ex. r66 and
Ex. 167; while the effect ofhandwashing is suggested by a rapid gesture on muted
strings. During all this we have heard ouly the whispered fearful comments of the
Doctor and the Gentlewoman ('How came she by that light?' 'Why it stood by
her; she .. .' 'Her eyes are open' 'Ay, but their sense are shut .. .').When Lady
Macbeth does begin to speak (Una macchia!) it is to the following well-known
accompaniment:
195
Andante assai sostenuto cora.
str. P ===-- ====-ere.
That this dates from 1847 should surprise no one: it is the kind of elaborate self-
perpetuating pattern which occurs in all the early operas and which Verdi first
renounced in Stiffelio. Here for once it has real dramatic and musical force. As the
scene unfolds it gives way to two other patterns no less expressive before petering
out in plain string pulsations.
The whole of Lady Macbeth's speech is here, moulded from Shakespeare's prose
with ottonari, and worked by Verdi into a design of modified symmetry-two stanzas
ofeighteen bars apiece, the first ending in D fiat, the second in E major; a shorter verse
of nine bars returning to the original key, and a sixteen-bar coda. The vocal line is
marked as in the Act I duet sempre sotto voce, with a phrase here and there to be sung a
voce spiegata; yet despite the pertichini from Doctor and Gentlewoman, the broken
phrases ('Yet here's a spot.... Out, damned spot! out, I say! ... One, two; why,
then 'tis time to do it .... Yet who would have thought the old man.to have had
so much blood in him?') the effect is of one endless, uninterrupted, .unrepeating
melody. Two very personal harmonic effects call for mention: the melting C major
6/4 chord in the middle of an E major cadence at the passage 'all the perfumes of
Arabia will not sweeten this little hand' and the sinister side-slip of two other
6/4s at 'Banquo' s buried; he cannot come out on's grave'. Much ofLady Macbeth's
line lies in the lower register of the voice; but her final phrase includes a high
D flat marked Un jil di voce (an effect which most singers achieve by singing
mezzo-forte as far offstage as possible). A reference to Ex. 166 over a thudding
bass follows her exit, and ends a scene whose only fault is that it occurs so soon
after the still more memorable chorus of exiles. A revival of the 1847 Macbeth
308
MACBETH
would be of more interest to Verdi students than to the ordinary music-lover; but
it would at least allow the sleepwalking scene to 'tower in its pride of place'.
Scene 3: a room in Dunsinane Castle
This opens to a clatter of orchestral sound, indicative of the battle raging outside.
Macbeth is discovered musing on his destiny as in Shakespeare's V, iii: 'Fear not,
I
Macbeth; no man that's born of woman shall e'er have power upon thee.' So
he is safe enough; but adagio string quavers depict his growing mood oflistlessness
('my way of life I is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf') and make way for the
hero's only lyrical adagio in the whole opera (Piela, rispello, amore).* The words
correspond closely to Shakespeare's 'and that which should accompany old age, I as
honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I I must not look to have; but, in their
I
stead, curse not loud but deep'. The aria uses the simple design with a new
breadth and freedom. The second limb of the melody (a') is extended with verbal
repetition into a melting dominant cadence. There is no a3; instead the music
strikes out unexpectedly into E major, at the words 'Sella bestemmia', returning
to the home key of D flat within the final three bars. By way of compensation
the main theme is restated as a full-throated melody for upper woodwind and
divisi violins in octaves in a regular eight-bar period, remaining firmly in D flat
throughout and joined by the voice as it moves towards the final cadence. This
kind of orchestral intervention, as though the composer were associating himself
directly with the singer's grief, is new and prophetic.
There is a commotion offstage, and a cry of women; then the Gentlewoman
comes in to announce that the Qu.een is dead. Macbeth is permitted only a tiny
fragment of his famous speech; but to Verdi what remained was of sufficient
importance for him to want to improve his setting of it in 1865. 'Life's . . . a
I I
tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' For 'told by an
idiot' the original score had a slow climbing figure underpinned by trilling
clarinets and bassoons which give an appropriate foretaste ofiago's 'Credo'. 'Sound
and fury' is sung fortissimo; 'signifying nothing' forms a straightforward cadence.
More subtly in the later version the entirepassageissung over a brooding diminished
seventh of accidie with hollow-sounding sforzandi low on the clarinet, and the
last note is interrupted by military fanfares, as Macbeth's soldiers enter to tell him
that Birnam Wood is on the move. Desperately he calls for his sword and shield
and leads his men away to battle. As he does so the scene begins to change to a vast
plain where fighting is in progress; and here the two scores diverge for the last
time, never to come together again.
Battles do not show Verdi at his best-witness I Lombardi and Giovanna d'Arco.
It was to the latter that he turned for his model in 1847. A series of rapid fanfares
give way to a paltry theme which is repeated in various keys alternating between
major and minor ad infinitum.
During all this a good deal happens. Malcolm, advancing at the head of his
troops, orders them to throw away the branches; then there is a general charge.
Macbeth and Macduff enter fighting. Macbeth taunts his opponent with the
*In a letter to Varesi of 4.2.1847 (Nuova Antologia (1932), pp. 438-9) Verdi had described
this movement as 'an adagio in D flat major, tender and melodious, which you must colour
[miniare-the word used for illuminating a manuscript] beautifuily'.
J09
 THE OPERAS OF VERDI
MACBETH
witches' prophecy, then learns that Macduff 'was from his mother's womb un-
197
timely ripp'd'. They fight and Macbeth falls. The fanfares come to a halt and Allegro MALE CHORUS
Macbeth has a short but impressive death scene in declamatory style. So im- do-
pressive is it that certain productions beginning with Glyndeboume's in 1936
insert it into the revised Macbeth, which is going strictly against Verdi's wishes
('I too am of the opinion that we should change the death of Macbeth, but I can't
think of anything better than a final hymn').* It has no direct parallel in Shake-
speare-it is merely a bitter farewell to life, ending 'Vile crown, I despise you'. t

v'e _ _ l'u- sur -pa- tor? D'un so£ fio it ful-mi-

il ful-mi-no, d'un sof-iio il Dio del-la vit-to ria,

A single phrase from the crowd, hailing Malcolm as King, brings down the curtain.
I The newer version however is more arresting. The battle is conveyed in a
rj lengthy passage of'theatrical' counterpoint. Despite a brilliant opening for trumpet
and trombone it is rather ineptly scored, the orchestral weight being often wrongly
distributed for this kind of writing; also it covers up the important exchange
between Macbeth and Macduff. Its climax occurs at the point where women and
cliildren enter fleeing in terror; then it gradually subsides into silence broken by off-
'I stage cries of 'Vicroi"Y!' The crowd hail Malcolm with a hymn (Macbeth, Macbeth
ov'e) laid out in three choral groups-bards, soldiers and women. It is an excitirig
chorus, very much of the new Verdi, open to cosmopolitan influences. Bizet's Pearl
!I Fishers and the Scottish symphony of Mendelssohn could each have contributed to
the invigorating melody with its tramp-tramp rhythm, its simple but brilliant
scoring with piccolo prominent over widespread chords on woodwind and
pizzicato strings.
*Letter to L. Escudier, 2.12.1864. R.M.I. (1928), p. 183; M. ,& L. (1923), p.l56.
tAn equivalent exists in Garricks performing version, which'was still current in nineteenth-
century England. See V. Godefroy, The Dramatic Genius of Verdi, vol. I (London, 1975), p. 139.
JIO
The old Macbeth was to be heard in every opera theatre in Italy and abroad up
till the 186os. The new version had to wait until this century to be appreciated.
Incredibly the first performance in England was that of Glyndebourne in 1938,
where it was taken up again during the 1950's. Nowadays it ranks with Nabucco,
Ernani and Luisa Miller as one of the four undisputed repertory pieces of the pre-
Rigoletto epoch. . .
The 1847 Macbeth is an astonishing achievement, not onfy for Its obvwus novel-
ties such as the sleepwalking and apparition scenes still less the lack of a con-
ventional love interest.* Even the traditional elements are better handled than
in Attila or Alzira. The arias grow organically from the implications of their own
material, rather than from t!1e deliberate elaboration of a fo,mula. Throughout
there is greater continuity and cohesion than ever before; whil? for dte study of
Verdi's stylistic evolution the early score offers a feature of umqu~ m~erest~the
unorthodox use of 6/4 chords in a remote key. It is remarkable how m his revlSlons
Verdi has not only preserved but enriched the 'colorito' of the original, whi~h is
more marked even than in Attila. It shows itself in the prevalence of E mmor
tonality, the dark scoring, the number of themes based on the falling semitone and
even in a characteristic contour to be found in certain opening phrases:
*Although often referred to by Italian cri~cs as the :op~a sen~ ~mo~e' it i~ by no t?eans
unique in this respect, even for its period. W1tness Doruzettt s BeltsarJo, L AssedJo d1 Calars and
Lucrezia Borgia, to name only a few.
JII
 THE OPERAS OF VERDI

198
ACT 1[ Scena edArla ACT m: Chorus 1865
(Lady Macbeth)1865 Scena 1Bancol1847 ~ ~

~~~ J f£J1 r yll?'e fiCJI .. pI J.. lS .t II~" MFt •@EJ

To this he added in r865 the long falling lines of La luce langue, of the codetta 13 I MASNADIERI
to Macbeth's solo after the apparitions and of the final duettino to Act III. Yet
certaiu problems remain. The revision of Macbeth eighteen years after its first
performance is comparable to Beethoven's new Fidelio of 1814 and Brahms's
refashioning of his trio, Op. 8, at the end of his life. But Brahms even in his youth
had an intellectual maturity which Verdi was slow to attain. Beethoven when he
revised Fide/io did so at far less distance of time and developmeut. Despite the
integrity of Verdi's genius, the passage of eighteen years was just too long to
allow him to re-enter his original conception at every point.*

*One curious feature of Macbeth-unparalleled in any other of Verdi's operas apart from II
Trovatore-is the use of key, not architectonically, but for purposes of dramatic definition.
Perhaps one should speak of'areas of pitch' rather than keys, since both the modes are included,
while the relation of one 'area' to another is not exploited. Three are of special importance: F
major/minor which belongs to Macbeth himself; A major/minor which denotes the outside
world, including the witches; D flat major which is associated with the idea of murder. There
are two subsidiary areas: E connoting power and B flat escape. Against this more or less constant
background the dramatic events spring all the more vividly into relie£ Note how the idea of
murder first insinuates itself into Macbeth's mind in the form of D flat major against the
prevailing F major of the duettino in Act I; how Lady Macbeth's cavatina proceeds from an
andante in D flat to a cabaletta in E major-i.e. from the idea of murder to that of power; how
the unequivocal E major of the Act ll fmale is shaken by jagged rhythms as though Macbeth's
newly acquired power were already tottering. Whether such a scheme was adopted by Verdi
consciously we cannot be sure. But it is significant that the 1847 ending in which Macbeth dies
on stage is in F minor, while the new fmale of1865 is in A major.
Since this chapter was written the version of 1847 has been several times resuscitated, notably in
concert form in London in 1978 at the 84th season of Henry Wood Promenade Concerts under
Jolm Matheson with Rita Hunter, Peter Glossop, John Tomlinson, Kenneth Collins, and the
BBC Chorus and Concert Orchestra, and at the Teatro Margherita, Genoa in 1986, under Gnnter
Neuhold with Olivia Stapp, Vicente Sardinero, Paolo Washington and Jesus Pinto. An earlier
revival, at Danville, Kentucky, in 1977 under David Lawton, was the occasion ofan international
congress organized by the American Institute of Verdi Studies, out of which arose Verdi's
(Macbeth': A Sourcebook, ed. D. Rosen and A. Porter (London and New York, 1984). This
published a number of newly discovered documents, including a copy in Verdi's handwriting of
Piave's original libretto, edited by Francesco Degrada, with alterations by Maffei, not all of which
Verdi accepted. Meanwhile it has been established that the starting point of the dramatic scheme
was Carlo Rusconi's translation of 1838 together with August Wilhelm Schlegel's important
Preface, a part-translation of which appears in the Milan libretto of 1850.
312