The art of composing the whole. “Macbeth” by G. Verdi at the Kaunas State Musical Theatre

Abstract

The article is devoted to the premiere of the Opera by J. Verdi’s “Macbeth” at the Kaunas state musical theatre (December 2019). The new production of a landmark work for the composer, in which he made his first attempt to reform the Italian Opera tradition about 200 years ago, is considered in the context of a long-standing controversy about the phenomenon of “director’s opera” and methods of identifying author’s meanings based on classical musical material. The author comes to the conclusion about the undoubted artistic integrity of the performance, in which the director’s conception is based on the principles of consensus of tradition and modernity, realistic and conventional forms. Skills and productive interaction of the Director (G. Zelvis), conductor (I. Janulevicius), choreographer (A. Jankauskas), set designer (T. Khyzha) allowed the authors Kaunas productions to bring in music and plastic images own response to the challenges of the theatre of our time.