Macbeth
Verdi revised all but 9 of his 27 operas after their premieres. Sometimes the touchups were for a particular situation and did not go into the published score; sometimes they were so global that the result was a new opera with a different name. Sometimes they involved musical improvements or additions without major alteration to the shape of the work.
But in four cases–Macbeth, Simon Boccanegra, La Forza del Destino and Don Carlos–he left us two quite radically different versions of the same title. In all four, the “new” music is wonderful: Italy’s greatest operatic master at the peak of his form. Why then revive their first versions?
The answer is that Verdi was a great composer in all phases of his long career, and so we haven’t really heard all his operas until we’ve heard both versions of those four. The case is probably strongest for Macbeth, because the familiar score, wonderful as it is, veers a little disorientingly between music written before Il Corsaro and Luisa Miller and music written after Un Ballo in Maschera and La Forza del Destino. Come witness the drama of one of Shakespeare’s most exciting plays in operatic form. Alexandra makes her Teatro Nuovo debut in the role of Lady Macbeth.
