Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in a potent production of Verdi’s classic.
By
Heidi Waleson
Sept. 24, 2026 at 4:29 pm ET
Lise Davidsen and Quinn Kelsey MARTY SOHL / MET OPERA
New York
Verdi’s “Macbeth” (1847, revised 1865) is a ferocious work, and the riveting new production by director Louisa Proske that opened the Metropolitan Opera season on Tuesday evening did not hold back. Jon Bausor’s set evoked the smoking ruins of a modern, war-ridden world. The proscenium frame was a giant hole blasted through a concrete wall with ends of rebar sticking out. Behind it, a revolving turntable exposed rubble-strewn outdoor expanses and the grim, stony interiors of Macbeth’s castle. Adam Silverman’s pitiless lighting accentuated the mood and brought the characters into strong focus.
The landscape was bleak even before Macbeth heard the fateful prophecy and embarked on his murderous adventure—Ms. Proske’s production suggests that the impulse toward tyranny never ends. The witches are thus visible manifestations of internal malevolent urges, and the 12 dancer witches who supplemented the large singing chorus of hags appeared throughout the evening—observing, slipping through walls, and egging the protagonists on. During the mourning chorus for the murdered King Duncan, for example, they robed the Macbeths in ermine and handed them crowns.
The turntable reflected the perpetual motion of the propulsive score, buoyantly conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The protagonists, unusually human for this pair, also seemed to be swept along. Quinn Kelsey’ssumptuous baritone brimmed with lyricism along with its power, expressing Macbeth’s ambition and terror at the same time. Soprano Lise Davidsen was a mercurial Lady Macbeth, pushing her husband into dark deeds yet with more sides to her than her steely, ringing high notes would suggest. In the cabaletta “Or tutti sorgete” she was almost playful as she invoked evil spirits to help commit murder; in “La luce langue,” after she and Macbeth decide to kill Banquo and his son Fleance, she seemed to be persuading herself that “the dead do not wish to reign.” In her final sleepwalking scene, you could hear her iron resolve gradually falling away, leaving only a plaintive sigh, “A letto, a letto” (“to bed”).
Ryan Speedo Green was an eloquent Banquo; Freddie De Tommaso’s bright tenor brought poignant lyricism to Macduff’s lament for his murdered family. Jonathan Burton was a clarion Malcolm, Duncan’s eldest son and heir; soprano Jazmine Saunders had an eerie, offstage cameo as the apparition of the Bloody Child. The potent Met chorus captured the shrieking cackles of the witches, the horror of the courtiers after Duncan’s murder, and the despair of the exiles fleeing Macbeth’s tyranny.
Montana Levi Blanco’s imposing Elizabethan costumes referred to the opera’s Shakespearean source, and the ruin of the Macbeths was all the more noticeable when their grand ceremonial garments were stripped away. Ms. Proske, best known in New York as co-founder of the unorthodox Heartbeat Opera, directed the intimate scenes as tight close-ups, and her many eye-catching moments, whether stage-filling or small-scale, were always purposeful. In the banquet scene, a pig brought in on a spit and laid on the table was suddenly replaced by Banquo, hallucinated by Macbeth. Leaping dancers, acrobatically choreographed by Jorrell Lawyer-Jefferson, brought the two battle scenes thrillingly to life (even their clashing swords threw off sparks). The Act 3 witches’ ballet featured a satirical re-enactment of the murder of Duncan.
During the introduction to her sleepwalking scene, Lady Macbeth wandered through a series of rooms, including one that contained Macduff’s gorily murdered wife and children; she ended up in her bedroom, where the red bed hangings had rotted away and a mudslide had breached the door. And Macduff did not kill Macbeth at the end. Instead, the victorious Malcolm’s jubilant followers dragged him off upstage to be burned at the stake while the witches temptingly held out the crown to the boy Fleance. The cycle, it seems, was destined to continue indefinitely.
