A Hot-Blooded Lady Macbeth in a Season Drowning in ‘Aidas’

The 100th anniversary of Verdi’s death on Jan. 27 is ready cause for most opera companies to perform, this season, at least one of the great Italian composer’s more than two dozen operas. On the West Coast, Los Angeles Opera began its season with “Aida,” San Diego Opera ends its season with “Aida” and San Francisco will have a June Verdi festival, with, as its centerpiece, “Aida.”.

In New York, Luciano Pavarotti is currently mustering whatever strength he has at the Metropolitan Opera for “Aida,” an opera you could also see this month in Vienna, Munich, Brno and Riga.

The predominance of “Aida” and the handful of Verdi’s other most popular operas makes it difficult for the average opera lover to get a sense of the amazing scope of the composer’s career. Southern California is thus enriched by Opera Pacific, which opened a new production of “Macbeth” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Tuesday night.

Of Verdi’s early operas, “Macbeth” is the most dramatically exciting and the most often performed because it includes the composer’s first penetrating psychological portrait, in the character of Lady Macbeth. From her arresting entrance, quietly reading the letter from her husband of the witches’ prophecy, and then suddenly erupting into volcanic ambition, we sense that this was something new in the world of opera in 1846.

Colin Graham’s production for Opera Pacific works very hard, and often convincingly, at revealing just what it is that makes Lady Macbeth tick. There are some fresh ideas, the most intriguing of which is an unusual exploration of her sexuality. Instead of being portrayed as a murderous cold-blooded monster, she is here a hot-blooded monster, whose craving for power is but one of her lusts. Her hold over Macbeth is passionately sexual; he is as easily distracted by her at the banquet as he is by Banquo’s ghost. When she puts the idea of murdering the king into his head, she does it in bed. And when Macbeth hurries out to do the deed, she erotically writhes on her back as she sings of seizing the scepter.

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If, in an Italian opera notable for its lack of love interest, Graham invests in Lady Macbeth a fascinating and believable sensuality and in Macbeth an equally unusual virility, he may be reacting to the strengths of his particular singers--Cynthia Lawrence and Richard Paul Fink (alternate leads Rebecca Copley and Gordon Hawkins sing in the Friday and Sunday performances). Lawrence lacks the ferocious dramatic intensity of a single-minded Lady Macbeth, but she makes up for it with her ardor. Her voice is large and sumptuous, and if she cannot always control it in the upper registers, it is still exciting to hear it unfurl. And when she does control the coloratura, as she did magnificently in the sleepwalking scene, it’s all the more exciting.

Fink, who like Lawrence is a young singer making his debut with the company, is an extraordinary, heroic baritone. Macbeth is a weak character, and is given less commanding music than his wife. But Fink has the true bearing and nobility of a king (in this, he is more like a Toshiro Mifune in the Japanese film version of Shakespeare, “Throne of Blood”--a strong man over whom only his wife has power). Meanwhile, the sheer authority and size of his voice puts him in a very select group of Verdi baritones.

Given these compelling singers, it is too bad that we don’t actually get to see more of them. Opera Pacific has acquired from the Municipal Theater of Santiago, Chile, dull sets, movable monoliths designed by Ramon Lopez, and bland costumes designed by Joel Berlin, and then made the stage look as uninvolving as possible by bathing everything in shadows. Everyone appears remote and expressionless. “Macbeth” is a colorful opera. Verdi was as attracted to the story by its fantastical elements as much as by its human characters. But the designers turn the witches and the apparitions into a scraggly crew, barely visible through murky lighting, hair and makeup. The blood-red sky that sometimes peeks out belabors the obvious.

Some light on Eric Owens, who sings firmly as Banquo, surely would have made him more sympathetic. And the tenor Andrew Richards, a vivid Macduff, certainly benefited when the sun finally came out for his aria at the end.

Still, it says an enormous amount about how far this company has risen in the two years since John DeMain, who conducted Tuesday, became music director. He did not bring much Verdian sweep to the performance, perhaps, but it was of greater value that he managed such a finely committed musical performance. The level of orchestra and chorus, both embarrassing not that long ago, is now impressive. This company has developed a new importance, and it would do well to shine some light on itself.

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“Macbeth” continues today, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m., Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, $29-$107, (800) 346-7372.