If you’ve ever wondered what happens when an 11th-century royal bloodbath is crashed by flashlights, a coffee maker and an existential crisis behind the velvet curtains, the Opernfestspiele Heidenheim’s summer 2026 production of Verdi’s Macbeth has your answer.
Streaming on demand on OperaVision via YouTube until February 28, 2027, this bold, meta-theatrical experiment is a fascinatingly flawed but musically satisfying affair. Captured live during its premiere on July 16, 2026 – one of only two staged performances given at the Festspielhaus CCH – this broadcast marks the tenth milestone in Heidenheim’s project to stage all of Verdi’s early operas in strict chronological order. Here, artistic director Marcus Bosch presents the rarely performed 1847 original Florentine version, a completely different beast than the heavily revised 1865 Paris score.
Andreas Baesler pulls double duty as stage director and designer, discarding traditional medieval Scottish tropes while transposing the bloody royal coup into the backstage machinations of a contemporary opera house.
The opera opens with the mimed conclusion of a performance in a theatre, Duncano posing victoriously, immediately followed by the re-imagining of the witches as a backstage cleaning coven. The Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno, dressed in janitorial gear, serves as the production’s driving force. They easily navigate Verdi’s jagged timbres, pivoting seamlessly from hushed, syncopated backstage whispers to terrifying walls of sound backed by the sinister clarity of the Cappella Aquileia, a modern-instrument pit band no larger than 50 players helmed by Bosch. This vocal flexibility extends directly to the male ensemble. In the assassins’ “Chi v’impose unirvi a noi?”, the performance is alternately robust in its dramatic weight and dynamically muted with tightly controlled, whisper singing that aptly captures the paranoia of the backstage ambush.
However, this backstage-at-the-opera concept creates a curious narrative friction. The minor key music of Verdi’s Introduzione doesn’t really suit the onstage mirth of Baesler’s mimed after-party. The cleaning coven, some sporting Opernfestspiele Heidenheim T-shirts, place a curse on a vocal score of Macbeth that’s pulled out of the prompter’s box. Later, the masked assassins do their dirty deed armed solely with flashlights. An electric coffee maker stands in for a cauldron, and Verdi’s martial brass fanfares clash with the theatre setting. The lowest point occurs during the approach of Birnam Wood; the iconic advancing forest is reduced to men holding wooden music stands labelled “Birnam” in front of them. Here, Baesler’s solution completely deflates any sense of supernatural dread.
Photo Credit: Oliver Vogel
Leah Gordon’s sleepwalking scene “was easily her best singing of the night"
To compound the oddities, Santiago Bürgi’s Malcolm arrives decked out in camouflage pants, puffer jacket, heavy gold necklaces seemingly borrowed from Mr. T, hands flashing shaka signs, and tongue hanging out. If this is Bonnie Scotland’s saviour, the realm is doomed! Even King Duncano’s brief appearance is swept up in this framing. Re-imagined as a flashy, over-the-hill actor sporting a KN95 mask due to some sort of respiratory illness, this mute character rather nonchalantly hands over his prop crown to Macbeth. Duncano’s looming offstage murder loses its royal weight and instead plays out like a corporate backstabbing over top billing.
The home-viewing experience suffers from what looks like a baked-in playback lag where the audio intermittently runs a split second ahead of the video, causing lip movements to drop fractionally behind the sound. When the audio and video do sync, the musical performances offer triumphs alongside vulnerabilities.
Austrian baritone Thomas Weinhappel, a Vienna Boys Choir alumnus and a familiar face to Hamilton, Ontario audiences from his two appearances in Attila Glatz’s Salute to Vienna concerts, commands the stage in the titular role. He trades his usual lighthearted operettic charm for deep psychological decay. In Macbetto’s dagger soliloquy, he sings the final syllable of “striscia” in a chilling nasally tone and afterward uses glottal stops/catches to heighten the phrase “tutto è finito” which Verdi marks “con voce soffocato.” However, his vocal zenith arrives in the final act recitative and aria “Perfidi! All’Anglo contro me v’unite!... Pietà, rispetto, amore,” where he navigates Verdi’s unusual, brief shift into the volatile and rather exotic key of F-flat major to mirror his character’s internal fractures. It leads into a riveting final death scene that brings the opera to a raw, visceral close.
Canadian soprano Leah Gordon avoids a one-dimensional “Ice Queen” caricature, uncovering layers of desperation and anxiety. While her upper register lacked stability early on – with her high Cs fluctuating wildly – her character’s famous sleepwalking scene, “Una macchia è qui tuttora,” was easily her best singing of the night. Here, Gordon delivers a lovely thread-spun fil di voce that perfectly conveys her character’s descent into madness.
The supporting cast is solid. Bass Don Lee, uniquely outfitted as the production’s maestro/conductor, giving his character an immediate, authoritative presence within the theatre framework, was a dependable Banco. He brings smooth legato phrasing to Banco’s tragic showcase aria, “Come dal ciel precipita,” making his subsequent murder and ghostly return all the more impactful as a literal internal mutiny. Tenor David Esteban delivers a heroic, impassioned rendition of Macduff’s “Ah, la paterna mano” while Julia Rutigliano is an effective Lady-in-Waiting.
Quibbles and caveats aside, this two-hour and ten-minute broadcast proves that early Verdi offers a thrilling journey for opera lovers.
Photo Credit: Oliver Vogel
The march of Birnam Wood was one of the moments of narrative friction in the director’s concept
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