With operas titled Otello, Macbeth, and Falstaff, Verdi surely must have loved Shakespeare.
If there is indeed a Heaven (and let’s not get into that, just now) and if I should be admitted (we can skip over that one too), I would love to organise a colloquium that would be based on Plato’s Symposium, with the addition of a few other choice souls, including Verdi and Shakespeare.
The Symposium is a dialogue set at a drinking party, where various, shall we say, iconic figures lounge about and give speeches, competing to see who can give the best account of the nature of love. Let’s put it another way: a philosopher, a comic poet, a tragic poet, a statesman, a physician, a lawyer, and an aristocrat walk into a bar… Naturally, it raises questions, at least implicitly. What sort of approach to life, or insight on life, can give the best account? What is the most responsible account, given that ideas have consequences, once they get out there. Who should we want or not want giving an account in our city, having an influence on the average person, and in particular the youth?
Macbeth presents an interesting opportunity to ask questions about opera and theatre. What accounts of love would Verdi and Shakespeare give? If they were put on trial, as Socrates was, for introducing strange gods into the city and corrupting the young, how would they defend themselves? If we were in the jury, how would we vote, and why?
I don’t know. That’s why I would like to organise that heavenly colloquium! But, until such time, I would be very grateful if anyone who does have thoughts about drama and opera would post them below, in the comments. Which do you prefer, and why? How do they speak to you differently?
“When asked by a reporter what he thought of Wagner, after a few comments, Verdi said, ‘I, too, made my own attempt at achieving unity of music and drama – in Macbeth.’”
Another way of thinking about this might be in terms of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, ever topical in Prague. The Word vs the Image (even a musical image, or perhaps especially a musical image). Can we put Shakespeare and Verdi on the two sides of that tension, at least superficially? Is it any surprise that the English so love the theatre and the word, while Central Europeans and Italians love opera and baroque imagery? And do they love these different art forms because of their different religious sensibilities, or have the art forms they have so loved shaped their religious sensibilities?
I imagine that both Shakespeare and Verdi were far too complex as individuals and too great as artists to be so neatly pigeonholed; nevertheless, there’s something to this line of inquiry. Verdi clearly thought about it. When asked by a reporter what he thought of Wagner, after a few comments, Verdi said, “I, too, made my own attempt at achieving unity of music and drama – in Macbeth.”
This was my first time taking in (I don’t want to say just seeing or hearing) one of Verdi’s Shakespeare-inspired creations. Knowing the story so well, it was great not to have to look up at the Czech and English translations flashed above the stage. But my sense was that an opera surely could never capture the richness of thought present in the play. What it could do is amplify the feeling of a moment. I was particularly struck by how the music at the death of King Duncan really did convey not only that the kingdom, but the world itself, had been unnaturally ripped asunder. But there were other moments, such as when MacDuff learns of the slaughter of his family, when the opera just fell short.
One of my friends who knows both opera and Shakespeare well says that Verdi’s Macbeth is his weakest work, and I had better look at his Otello for a fairer comparison.
Related essay from The Imaginative Conservative, on Voegelin, Hesiod, and song.