PIZZI VERSION : MODERN ‘MACBETH’ IN S.F.

Pier Luigi Pizzi’s bold new production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” at the San Francisco Opera opens with a striking coup de theatre.

The curtain rises on a bleak, essentially empty stage populated by a shadowy horde of skulking figures in black. Their bald heads, wild flaps of white hair streaking down the sides, pierce the mist that rises in mysterious billows from the drastically raked floor.

Pizzi’s witches are frightening, tangible forces. Despite the naive music the young Verdi wrote for them, they aren’t remotely quaint and silly. And, contrary to indications in the libretto, they don’t blithely come and go as needed.

Ominously, they stalk the stage throughout the evening. They watch their predictions come true with smug satisfaction as they haunt the agonized Macbeth and his obsessed Lady.

The witches are Pizzi’s honor.

Essentially, the Italian director-designer sees the opera as a nightmare in black. There is no need here for realistic scenery. A network of movable platforms and a few symbolic props will do nicely. Time and place are matters to be suggested, not defined. Mood is everything.

Much of the time, the concept works brilliantly, even on an epic scale. It is helpful to be spared the usual operatic pomp and make-believe trappings. Pizzi probes for modern psychological truths where other directors reduce the simplified Shakespearean drama to a series of conventional gestures and poses.

Some of the time, unfortunately, Pizzi the designer gets in the way of Pizzi the director. Occasionally, both designer and director get in the way of the composer.

Verdi was fastidious about contrasting brightness and gloom. There are the dazzling court and battle scenes at one extreme, the murky episodes involving the witches, the apparitions and, finally, Lady Macbeth’s shattering sleepwalk at the other.

Pizzi makes everything so grim, so relentlessly dreary that a gray cyclorama and a red flag register as shafts of blinding light. For him, the dark is dark enough.

Occasionally, the daring scenic devices actually compromise dramatic impact. Whenever a monologue looms, Pizzi brings his singers to the stage apron. The resultant immediacy is compelling, but getting in front of the scrim requires an awkward exit upstage followed by an awkward entrance downstage.

The confining procedure actually invites absurdity just when poignance is most wanted. Poor Lady Macbeth is forced to sing most of the Sleepwalking Scene stationed at the prompter’s box. Then, during the magically eerie postlude, she must climb, candle in hand, down into the orchestra pit.

Out, out damned gimmick.

Musically, the performance Tuesday night proved interesting rather than eloquent.

Kazimierz Kord conducted with splendid brio, with welcome crispness, clarity and momentum. But he also tended to slight the arching Italianate cantilena, the grandeur and the inherent pathos.

Singing Macbeth for the first time, Timothy Noble revealed an imposing sense of dramatic definition, considerable dynamic sensitivity and a warm, middleweight baritone that tended to become raspy at the top. After the first act, the management announced that he was afflicted with a throat ailment.

Replacing the originally scheduled and mysteriously absent Mara Zampieri, Shirley Verrett introduced her long-celebrated portrayal of Lady Macbeth to San Francisco. At this stage of her career, she approaches the flamboyant utterances cautiously, does her best to disguise basic vocal inequities and omits the climactic D-flat in the Sleepwalking Scene. She still phrases with canny intelligence, however, and often makes nuance, an intimate style and implied bravura compensate for frayed resources.

The supporting cast included John Tomlinson as an exceptionally sonorous and sympathetic Banquo (Verdi suits him far better than does Wagner), Vladimir Popov as a stand-and-sing-loudly Macduff, Daniel Harper as a nondescript Malcolm, Deborah Voight as an ear-catching Lady-in-Waiting.

The chorus, trained by Richard Bradshaw, sounded feeble. Thanks to the silent infiltration of 20 inspired and inspiring mimes, however, it looked vital.