Verdi Macbeth opera to a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. Directed 2013 by Dario Argento at the Teatro Carlo Coccia, Novara Italy. Stars Giuseppe Altomare (Macbeth), Giorgio Giuseppini (Banquo), Dimitra Theodossiou (Lady Macbeth), Valeria Sepe (Lady-in-waiting), Dario Di Vietri (Macduff), Ernesto Petti (Malcolm), Radu Pintillie (doctor), and Piero Ceffa (Assassin). Giuseppe Sabbatini conducts the Orchestra Filarmonica del Piemonte and the Schola Cantorum San Gregorio Magno of Trecate, Italy (Chorus Master Mauro Rolfi). Sets and lighting by Angelo Linzalata; costumes by Elena Bianchini. Directed for TV by Marco Scalfi. Sung in Italian. Released 2015, disc has 5.0 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA
Dario Argento is a famous Italian director of horror, slasher, and vampire movies. This is his first effort at staging an opera. Is Dynamic trying to get out of a rut? Well, Mark Mandel, writing in the September 2015 Opera News (pages 82-83) confirms that visually this is, to use the latest cliché I picked up from my daughter, a hot mess. Mandel declares the singers to be OK, but he rates the Piedmont Orchestra as average and the chorus worse. He concludes, "Although Novara is just fifty kilometers from Milan, it's as if Abbado, Muti, and Chailly never existed."
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