‘What drives Macbeth? What do the serial murders imply? Does bloodshed lead to yet more bloodshed ? Does war lead us to go mad ? How can we bear the absence of an heir who could save us? And who is Lady Macbeth ? How can one contain a dream or a nightmare of power? How is it that we enjoy watching this, one of the darkest of Shakespeare’s tragedies? Here is dirt, night,  and death. With Macbeth, Giuseppe Verdi opened up a world of new possibilities for musical theatre. Dramatic truth prevails over the classic demands of the bel canto thanks to a new synthesis of the drama and the music and a precise and complex characterisation of the main characters.’ This is the description that la Monnaie gives of the new production of Macbeth presented at la Monnaie by Krzysztof Warlikowski in June 2010. The production was accompanied by La Monnaie’s symphony orchestra and chorus, conducted by Paul Daniel.

The opera was rebroadcast on Klara on 19 June and on Musiq3on 14 July.

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The price of seats varied between 10 and 104 €. For more details, please visit the site La Monnaie.

Performances took place on 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 22, 25, 27, 29 and 30 June.

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Krzysztof Warlikowski was born in 1962. After studying history, Romanian Philology and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, he moved to Paris, where he continued his studies. In 1988, he returned to Poland to study  directing at the Krakow Higher State Theatre School. He worked with Krystian Lupa and collaborated with Peter Brook, Ingmar Bergman and Giorgio Strehler.
His producing style owes much to plays by authors from a huge variety of registers, from Labiche to Koltès via Shakespeare, a writer whose work particularly inspired him (A Midsummer night’s Dream, A Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Hamlet, etc). He is also interested in opera. In his œuvre, we can point in particular to Don Carlos by Giuseppe Verdi (2000) and Ubu Roi by Krzysztof Penderecki (2003).
Loyal to his collaborators, he often works with the set designer Małgorzata Szczęśniak (as was the case with this production) and the composer Paweł Mykietyn.

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Krzysztof Warlikowski was present in Belgium in 2009: he put on (A)pollonia at the Théâtre de la Place à Liège in October and at the Brussels National Theatre in December. For more information on this, subject on our site,  please click HERE.