Macbeth has achieved a great deal. He is respected as a general. But witches prophesy greater things for him and awaken his greed. With the murder of King Duncan, Macbeth seizes power. Spurred on by his power-hungry wife, he sets in motion a cruel spiral of violence and crime.

What began in blood ends in blood: Lady Macbeth dies in madness, Macbeth is killed in a duel. The story of the rise and fall of two men of power who are fatefully chained together is exemplary of a degenerate political society that has lost its utopia.

Close to his great role model Shakespeare, Giuseppe Verdi created his most unconventional opera with Macbeth, in which music and drama are particularly closely intertwined. The result is a night-black operatic thriller of abysmal depth.

 

"So far have I risen in blood, that I must wade on My way back as fierce as that to the end."

Shakespeare / Heiner Müller

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