A new production of Verdi’s first Shakespeare based opera opened the 26-27 season last night. The cast was headed by Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen. Obviously I’ll have to wait until Oct 17 to see the production as it is the second opera of this season’s Met in HD series. The performance was broadcast on the Met’s Sirius channel. Here are a few thoughts about the vocal aspects of the opera.

As the listening audience was repeatedly reminded, the three protagonists in Macbeth are Macbeth, his wife, and the witches. While Shakespeare had three of these hags, Verdi uses a chorus of witches divided into three groups, each with its own music. This production made a lot of extra use of the witches. They seemingly appeared in every scene, as their cackling repeatedly revealed to an audio-only audience.

I attended the first Met performance of the opera on February 5, 1959. My reaction to the bevy of hags was amusement. In the intervening years, I’ve gotten used to them, have discarded my initial reaction, and have accepted them as part of the show.

I have seen Quinn Kelsey perform several times. He has a fine lyric baritone. It’s suitable for the great Verdi baritone roles. His voice lacks only one quality that Verdi often requires-menace. He can’t muster the dark, angry sound often needed-a snarl, for lack of a better word. Vocally, he did not convey Macbeth’s transformation from a loyal supporter to a murderous usurper, and finally into an evil man who becomes resigned to the justice of his fate. He did not attempt to match interpolated a high A-flat Leonard Warren inserted at the close of “Pietà, rispetto, amore” during the Met’s prima of the opera.

Much the same can be said of Lise Davidsen’s portrayal of Lady Macbeth. She’s not a Verdi soprano, as her recent outing as Leonora in Verdi’s Forza showed. Lady Macbeth is closer to her vocal strengths than Verdi’s more vocally opulent soprano roles. Here, strength and blatant evil are required. To an audio-only listener, Davidsen did not sound very involved in Lady Macbeth’s furious ambition and murderous disposition. The famous sleepwalking scene did not evoke the terror of a woman undone by her own evil.

Leading tenor Freddie De Tommaso took the relatively small part of Macduff ostensibly, as suggested by the Met’s General Manager Peter Gelb in a pre-performance interview, to be part of opening night and to sing the famous aria “Ah, la paterna mano” in Act IV. There’s very little else for Macduff to do; the young Carlo Bergonzi sang the role in the Met’s premiere back in the Dark Ages. De Tommaso did a creditable job with the aria, but there was nothing extraordinary about his delivery.

Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin was at the top of his game. He gave an incisive reading of Verdi’s thrilling score-the best of his pre-Rigoletto operas, even allowing for its revision 18 years after its premiere.

In summary, this was a performance generally up to the standards of the Met. But I doubt that anyone will be writing about it a generation from now. Perhaps I’ll change my mind after I’ve seen it next month.

Macbeth – Metropolitan Opera
September 22, 2026

Macbeth – Quinn Kelsey
Lady Macbeth – Lise Davidsen
Banquo – Ryan Speedo Green
Macduff – Freddie De Tommaso
Malcolm – Jonathan Burton
Lady-in-Waiting – Marcy Stonikas
Servant – Jeongcheol Cha
Fleance – Tāwhana Smith-McDaniel
Murderer – Christopher Job
Warrior – Alan Williams
Bloody Child – Jazmine Saunders
Crowned Child – Timothy Choi
Herald – Yohan Yi
Doctor – Bradley Garvin

Conductor – Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Production – Louisa Proske
Set Designer – Jon Bausor
Costume Designer – Montana Levi Blanco
Lighting Designer – Adam Silverman
Choreographer – Jorrell Lawyer-Jefferson
Action Director – Ran Arthur Braun
Chorus Director – Tilman Michael