Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Avenue, New York; April 12, 2023—Now coming up on its 10th year, the innovative, sometimes revolutionary, relevant Heartbeat Opera is presenting its re-imaginings of Puccini’s Tosca and Verdi’s Macbeth at Baruch Performing Arts Center. The former is set in a dictatorial regime, the latter, more universal, asks and answers questions about war, power, the press, and ambition. And most urgently, women.
The play itself is problematic–as Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy by more than an hour, scholars once posited that an act of the opera had been lost; the argument stated that Lady Macbeth’s decline into guilt and madness simply happens too quickly in the play as it is.
Well, Heartbeat, without exactly working with that probably invalid but juicy theory, makes the Lady the center of its 95-minute reworking of Verdi’s opera. The lights go up on Lady M, sobbing, tossing, and turning in bed; she is clearly tormented. He, annoyed, gets up and goes to sleep on the couch. Then we go back to the start of the Verdi version: the entry of the three witches (here called the “Three Sisters”) and the two men: Banquo, an okay-kinda guy, and Macbeth, a slick, on the rise businessman with an icy demeanor and plenty of ambition. It’s a fine setup for the fact that here, in Heartbeat’s world, he is the one that corrupts her and not vice-versa.
Lady, here as in the Shakespeare, asks to be “unsexed” and not act like a weak woman. But Verdi omitted a major piece of information about Lady that Shakespeare makes clear, and that Heartbeat includes early and clearly in dialogue (which is presented in English). Lady speaks it: “I have given suck, and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.” The grief of losing a child torments her and interrupts her sleep and she loses her center. This loss, and the politics and ambitions around her, have driven her to what she is now: cold-blooded and on the verge of breakdown. And all of this while her husband, as cool as can be having heard from the Sisters that he will rise the corporate ladder, hands out his business cards to members of the audience. Social media follows them.
Music director Daniel Schlosberg fearlessly has re-imagined Verdi’s score for six players–pianist, violinist, clarinetist, trombonist, percussionist, and guitarist. All are asked to do odd musical things that make you sit up and pay heed: Paul Wonjin Cho’s clarinet sours weirdly at times, adding a drunken weirdness to the Banquet Scene; Samuel George’s trombone evokes something hellish; Mika Godbole does something to the vibraphone that evokes true creepiness.
Electronica was used to de-stabilize our listening experience and it worked handsomely. The musicians, on the side of the playing area and clearly visible, seemed to be having a great time. Among the many cuts was the whole character of Macduff, the chorus, and Macbeth’s final aria of defeat. The refugee chorus, tacked on and shortened, was sung by the Lady and the Sisters–perhaps mourning any certainty in a wicked, unfair world. It worked.
Grand-voiced Lisa Algozzini dared to sing Lady M, a role that, as written, is beyond most seasoned, big-voiced, vocally agile sopranos. She ducked some big high notes, flatted on a couple of others, and like most sopranos was flummoxed by the role’s fiorature. Nonetheless, her focus, intent, and sheer wildness were hard to fault, and “La luce langue” had a spine-chilling inevitability that let us know just who she was.
Looking like the perfect Yuppie-WASP and sounding like a Verdi baritone-on-the-rise, Kenny Stavert’s Macbeth was world class, and Isaiah Musik-Ayala’s Banquo had presence and resonance. The Sisters were Samarie Alicea, Taylor-Alexis Dupont, and Sishel Claverie, lithe and menacing. (Actually, Alicea, vocally indisposed, only appeared; Victoria Lawal sang from the orchestra.)
Director Emma Jaster kept the movement and characterizations fluid, the natural and supernatural intertwined, which clearly is what Schlosberg had in mind as well. Normalcy in all things is questioned, and the closeness of the audience to the players and singers make Lady M an experience we are all having together. Quite stunning.
