Macbeth, Otello, Falstaff
Donald Macleod concludes his exploration of Verdi's operas with his Shakespearean trio: Macbeth, a ground-breaking early work, and the masterpieces Otello and Falstaff.
For Verdi, Shakespeare was 'the great poet of the human heart' and the greatest of all playwrights, whom he sometimes referred to simply as 'Papa'. Donald Macleod concludes his exploration of Verdi's operas with his Shakespearean trio: a groundbreaking early work, Macbeth; and his final two operatic essays, Otello and Falstaff - acknowledged pinnacles of the genre. All three excerpts show the protagonists losing control in one way or another: Lady Macbeth, in the famous sleepwalking scene, is unable to suppress her murderous guilt; Otello is unable to control his jealously and rage; and Falstaff, tricked into taking cover in a laundry basket, finds himself at the mercy of gravity, as he's unceremoniously tossed out of a window into the River Thames.
Producer: Chris Barstow.
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Giuseppe Verdi
Macbeth, Act 2 鈥� Gran scena del sonnambulismo: 'Vegliammo invan due notti'
Performer: Carlo Zardo (Doctor), Stefania Malag煤 (Lady-in-waiting), Shirley Verrett (Lady Macbeth), Orchestra del Teatro all Scala, Claudio Abbado (Conductor)
- DG 449 732-2.
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Giuseppe Verdi
Otello, extract from opening of Act 3: "La vedetta del porto"
Performer: Philippe Duminy (Herald), Pl谩cido Domingo (Otello), Sergei Leiferkus (Iago), Cheryl Studer (Desdemona), Orchestre de l鈥橭p茅ra Bastille, Myung-Whun Chung (Conductor)
- DG 439 805-2.
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Giuseppe Verdi
Falstaff, Act 2, Part 2
Performer: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (Alice Ford), Fedora Barbieri (Mistress Quickly), Nan Merriman (Meg Page), Anna Moffo (Nannetta), Tito Gobbi (Falstaff), Rolando Panerai (Ford), Renato Ercolani (Bardolf), Nicola Zaccaria (Pistol), Luigi Alva (Fenton), Tomaso Spataro (Dr Cajus), Philharmonia Chorus, Philharmonia Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan (Conductor)
- EMI 5 67083 2.
Broadcast
- Fri 23 Jul 2010 12:00大象传媒 Radio 3
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