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We constantly remind ourselves what a great privilege it is to gather and share music and stories in this majestic venue, which has

been the site of human activity—and, therefore, storytelling—for thousands of years. We are building on this legacy as we tell stories of the recent past through our contemporary lens. Our composers this fall—Beethoven, Verdi, and Wagner—all challenged the conventions of their times, pushing audiences forward to new understandings of human nature.

We hope you feel ready for a journey when you come to the Opera House. I like to think we enter an imagined world that is startlingly fresh yet deeply familiar. The joy of live opera is the chance to explore emotions, hear stories, and meet characters who resonate with our experience even as they expand our consciousness.

Macbeth brings us into the company of two of the greatest dramatists who ever lived: William Shakespeare and Giuseppe Verdi. This was Verdi’s first setting of Shakespeare. The themes of political corruption, authoritarian rule, and longing for liberation appealed to him on a personal level. Italy was still a fractured country, and his operas helped foster the ever-increasing revolutionary activities of the Risorgimento.

This score was a turning point for the composer. While Verdi maintained the great set pieces that his audiences expected—virtuosic arias and grand choruses—he also experimented with a more fluid, cohesively unfolding music drama. The scene of

Banquo’s ghost, the dagger soliloquy, and the prophecies owe a lot to the revolutionary ideas of his exact contemporary, Richard Wagner. I hope you joined us for Gods and Mortals , a concert of Wagner’s works, earlier this month.

I find Macbeth to be a stunningly moving opera. It is a story of abuse of power that turns deadly; it is also the story of how ordinary people can band together to change their situation. For something lighter, we hope you’ll join us for our holiday opera, Jungle Book . Shere Khan may start out as a power-hungry bully, like Macbeth, but when the wolf cubs gather together against him, they’re able to transform the power structure of the jungle by showing some compassion.

Thank you for your continued support. It is because of you that we can continue to bring important stories to this great stage.

Macbeth arrives, and together the pair quickly agree to the murder. King Duncan and his guards and other warriors (including MacDuff, his son Malcolm, and Banquo with his son) arrive in procession and are received into the castle. Later, a vision of a dagger spurs Macbeth to go and kill Duncan. But when he returns, blood stained and wracked with remorse, his wife accuses him of cowardice. She snatches the bloody dagger and heads to the king’s rooms to incriminate the guards. She returns with her own hands covered in blood, and together they prepare for the discovery of the regicide.

Macduff and Banquo prepare for an early departure. While Macduff goes to wake the king, Banquo reflects on the wild night. Macduff discovers the murder, awakening everyone in the castle, including the guilty but newly cleaned up Macbeths. With the entrance of the dead king’s body everyone at court vows vengeance on the unknown assassin.

Preparations for the opera developed rapidly, particularly as Verdi had already done significant work for what would be his first Shakespearean subject. The composer declared to his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, that the tragedy of Macbeth is “one of the greatest creations of man! If we can’t do something great with it, let us at least try to do something out of the ordinary ...”

Verdi, who was passionate about Shakespeare, was so devoted to his opera that he insisted on micromanaging all aspects of the rehearsal and revision process. Indeed, he made sure that Piave created the libretto according to his exact specifications, hiring his friend Andrea Maffei to redo particular sections. He also led the main artists through endless rehearsals, coaching them until every aspect was according to his design. Despite the general unfamiliarity of Italian audiences with Shakespeare, the premiere in Florence in March of 1847 was a hit and the opera enjoyed a successful run across Italy.

In 1864, Léon Escudier, a French impresario and publisher, asked Verdi to add ballet music for a revival of the opera at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris. Verdi agreed but also was determined to make other alterations. (Since the opera’s premiere, he had seen several productions of the Shakespeare play and gained insight into aspects of the work, in addition to being able to draw upon his own musical development in the ensuing two decades.) The revised version included: a new aria for Lady Macbeth in Act II; major changes to Act III, including a new duet for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; a new chorus at the beginning of Act IV; and the replacement of Macbeth’s death scene with a final “Inno di vittoria.” This is the version WNO’s current production uses, except for the death scene with its original aria “Mal per me.”

Macbeth was a departure from Italian operas of the time period in that it centered not on ecstatic and/or doomed lovers, but despicable characters scheming for political power. However, it reflected a cause that was in the air, with the rise of the Risorgimento , a nationalist movement that aimed to gather what was then a smattering of Italian-speaking states and principalities into a unified Italy.

Verdi followed the political situation enthusiastically, writing to his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, in 1848, “Honour to these heroes! Honour to all Italy, which in this moment is truly great! The hour of her liberation has sounded.”

Following the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, Verdi was selected to serve in the country’s first parliament, which he did for four years. So it is no surprise that in his revision of Macbeth , the composer scuttled Shakespear’s ending, with the lead character’s death, for the crowning of Malcolm as king of Scotland, accompanied by triumphant hymn of victory.

Macbeth is one of the two or three early Verdi operas that have become standard repertoire. What did he do successfully in this opera?

His writing for women is one of the elements I am always blown away by in this piece. Not only is the entire female chorus highlighted, but the power and fierceness of Lady Macbeth’s lines show a passion and emotional intelligence that feels very unique for this point in his career.

What is your concept for this production?

I studied Shakespeare in England and later performed the role of Lady Macbeth many times, so it is a story very close to my heart. One of the hardest elements of the piece has always been the explanation of the female chorus as a group of 20-plus witches, instead of Shakespeare’s original three. I have always wondered:

“What two men walking in the forest run into 20 women, and fail to make some sort of comment about that?” This led to another question: What would happen if Macbeth and Banquo couldn’t see the witches? What if the chorus of women were spirits—souls of the dead lost in the wars? What if it is their conjoined power that allows them to create three manifestations in the corporeal world, and these manifestations are what Macbeth and Banquo see? If the beings offering Macbeth these choices, these proposals of what reality could be, weren’t even real, how does that affect our understanding of the choices he makes? By having the women’s chorus be victims of his battles, their presence is a reflection of the world he has helped create. They lack real power to correct the world (they are spirits), but they can light a fire under his ambition, and Macbeth’s choices are put into focus.

Locations in the piece are less specific, but it is always understood whether we are outside in nature (the world of the witches or spirits—essentially following natural rules) or inside, in a world of man-made rules and desires.

You last directed Il trovatore at WNO. What do you like about directing Verdi?

Verdi’s music is so dramatic, I love that you just trust the music to do its thing. I see my job as trying to create a capsule for the audience in which they experience his music, the artistry of the cast onstage and in the pit, as well as Shakespeare’s reflection of the human condition.

At the same time, costumes for this Macbeth do reference a certain era. “While the piece speaks to all time and places, we are using mid-19th century clothing to place the action in an abstracted version of Verdi’s own time period,” says Rom. It is a way to connect the story directly to Verdi’s music. “The music really drives the dramaturgy in opera and by extension that certainly includes the design elements,” he says. “It invites us to dream in a less literal manner, and in that dream we arrive at something that can be more deeply felt and more truthful than any other art form is capable of achieving.”

Following closely on the heels of the daunting Princess Turandot, she returns in an equally challenging role of dark vocal and dramatic demands. In an interview with WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello, she noted that Lady Macbeth is driven largely by ambition. “Since women in the 11th century didn’t have the right to obtain power the way men did—through their wits, intelligence, diplomacy, battle, marriage, or birthright (even queens needed a husband to be accepted as a ruler by the people)—Lady Macbeth had to find another way. And she did.”

Dramatically, the character of Lady Macbeth is torn between a real and imagined world, between inner and outer dialogue, says Plowa, “She’s undergoing a psychological personality split in order to withstand terrible thoughts and deeds with which she had paved the bloody way to the crown.”

Verdi portrayed this moral drama, she adds, “in brilliant vocal writing so demanding for the soprano as she needs to deliver it all: low, high, strong, soft, fast, and slow, to imitate the true roller coaster of emotions in the Shakespearean story.” Verdi himself said he wanted Lady Macbeth to have a diabolical voice, “harsh, stifled, and hollow.”

For this psychologically demanding portrayal (and others), PÅ‚onka’s preparation starts the moment she enters the theater. It crescendos as she dons her makeup, wig, and costume, and reaches a climax as she waits in the wings to make her entrance. At that moment, “Ewa evaporates.” Like a sleepwalking Lady Macbeth, “Often, I don’t remember what happened on stage. Parts of it come back to me in the middle of the night, in the next day or two. It’s just this sort of thing one can’t verbalize—pure magic.”

The composer wanted to incorporate musical sounds from her father’s homeland, in which structure and complexity derive from rhythmic cycles and melodic improvisation rather than harmonic development. Rhythm comes to the forefront in Jungle Book through Indian dance performance as well, in a collaboration with D.C.’s own Taal Dance Academy.

A colorful, new opera in English, Jungle Book finds real world connections in a familiar tale. Main character Mowgli is a young girl, a refugee who is taken in by the wolf pack. Members of the community must decide whether to accept this newcomer despite her differences. “So at the same time that we’re telling a compelling story, we’re also introducing both the audience and the performers to a different tradition of music,” says Sankaram. Jungle Book continues WNO’s own tradition of presenting family-friendly operas for the holidays.