Word: banquo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Part of the awe Macbeth inspires in a playgoer is that of watching a voracious bird of prey. Sworn in honor to be a trusted host to Duncan, the King, Macbeth swoops on his sleeping sovereign and murders him. As the new King, he wheels on his best friend, Banquo. When a mettlesome foe, Macduff, threatens him, Macbeth's talons are unsheathed to mortally savage Macduff s wife and her entire brood. Finally, all Scotland falls bleeding prey to his gashing beak...
More persistent than Banquo's ghost or a Brittanica salesman, the phenomenon of the Hollywood Ten trial, and the terrible trouble people with a past encountered in the 1940s and '50s, still dogs us almost thirty years after it started. Each time it shows up it invokes terrible bitterness that doesn't seem to subside with time. Even the week before last The New York Times devoted a series of spreads to a bout between two old birds (Lillian Hellman and Diana Trilling) slugging it out for whatever audience still wants to know who acted badly during the bad times...
...Scala opened with Macbeth, considered one of its best new productions. Typically, the company offered a cast of Italian and non-Italian singers, notably Italy's Piero Cappuccilli as Macbeth, the U.S.'s Shirley Verrett as Lady Macbeth and Bulgaria's Nicolai Ghiaurov as Banquo. On the podium was Claudio Abbado, the company's former music director who, at 43, is a conductor of international stature. The production was conceived and staged by Italy's Giorgio Strehler (see box). For Strehler, it was one of three moments in the spotlight. His staging of Figaro...
...sign of the saint is gone. Fear itself takes over the command, but with no less skill or strength than made Macbeth a hero in suppressing the revolt against Duncan. Especially fine is the scene where the king persuades and instructs the two murderers concerning the death of Banquo and his son whose end is needed, he explains, "Masking the business from the common eye for sundry weighty reasons." The two identically costumed soldiers are reminiscent of Rosencranz and Guildenstern in their ignobility: the king alternately wheedles and bullies them. "I will advise you where to plant yourselves, Acquaint...
...setting is not particularly inspired, but it works, in such scenes as Macbeth's slow progress up the stairs which enclose the stage front to Duncan's chamber, or the massing of figures in the several group scenes. And the special effects people do very well with difficult material: Banquo is as ghostly as anyone could ask in a green light, posed behind Macbeth's chair like Christ in The Last Supper. And the procession of silhouetted kings that show Banquo's line to be are reassuring because young Malcolm seems too wimpy to prove right royal, after having been...