Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
There was no mistaking the real king at Saturday night’s opening performance for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s concert version of Verdi’s Macbeth. It was conductor Riccardo Muti, making a grand entrance as the entire orchestra, CSO chorus, and a cadre of guest soloists stood at attention and the audience broke into wild applause.
This is a musical purist’s Macbeth, stripped of its usual visual elements: no sets, no costumes, no directorial distortion, and none of the physical action that, especially in this opera, with its ghosts and witches, can turn the whole thing hokey. I’m a sucker for everything visual, but with the orchestra on the stage instead of in a pit and the singers (including soprano Tatiana Serjan as Lady Macbeth) as living instruments at the maestro’s command, Verdi’s sheer aural drama stands, magnificently, on its own.
