Verdi’s Macbeth: A Sourcebook ed. by David Rosen, Andrew Porter (review)

Reviews 387 traditional readings of Shakespeare’s play as Individualist tragedy. On the other hand, Brecht’s strategy is complicated by a tendency to give the posited future specific features. Suvin discusses this tendency and points to some of its Leninist features (the exact character of Brecht’s political phi­ losophy, as Suvin points out in the Afterword, remains to be delineated) in his essay on Coriolan and again in his essay on St. Joan of the Slaugh­ terhouses. The three essays are also excellent close readings of the plays concerned; the essay on St. Joan is a masterpiece. Suvin’s final two essays move beyond Brecht to consider two “counter­ projects” (p. 271), the dramaturgies of Beckett and the Happenings. Suvin’s chapter on Beckett is particularly valuable as a telling but balanced Marxist critique. Although the majority of its essays are devoted to Brecht, To Brecht and Beyond is more than a book on Brecht. Or, rather, it is a book on Brecht in the way that any post-Brechtian examination of dramaturgy must be. Its general thrust and the innumerable insights and provocations it provides make it a book no one interested in dramatic theory or modern drama can afford to ignore. JOHN ROUSE Tulane University Verdi’s Macbeth: A Sourcebook, ed. David Rosen and Andrew Porter. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1984. Pp. 527. $39.95. It often happens that a work not of the first rank in a great creative figure’s canon turns out to be the most fascinating, illuminating, indeed most exciting of all—showing as it does the first struggles of individual genius to free itself from the cocoon of contemporary fashion. Among Mozart’s operas the musically stupendous (though dramatically ungainly) La finta giardiniera holds this position. For Verdi the crucial work is Macbeth. Three days after its Florentine premiere, Felice Varesi, the baritone who sang the title role, wrote in a letter: “Verdi has adopted a new style suited to the fantastical nature of Shakespeare’s tragedy and in my opinion this score of his is the most careful and the most artistically beautiful that he has written.” A reviewer of the Milanese premiere wrote, “The valiant author . . . has attempted with Macbeth a new path, to separate himself from the crowd of composers,” and more recently Julian Budden has concluded that “over and over again [Macbeth] lifted [Verdi] out of the rut of operatic cliché.” It is therefore eminently just that Macbeth should be singled out for the attentions devoted to it in this extraordinarily rich and estimable volume, which was generated by an international Verdi Congress that took place in Danville, Kentucky, in 1977 and centered on a performance of the 1847 Macbeth (the revised Parisian version of 1865 now holds the stage). Professor Rosen and Mr. Porter and their many contributors give us a book that thrusts happily beyond the bounds of mere musicology, providing, among other insights, important knowledge about: the Con­ tinental reception of Shakespeare; the modes of 19th-century dramaturgy and scenic technology; the styles of contemporary belles lettres; the as 388 Comparative Drama always colorful, perfidious, hectic life of the operatic backstage; not to mention much valuable insight into Verdi’s methods of generating a libretto and composing. The heart of the volume is the 120 pages of letters relevant to Macbeth, which are printed in Italian and in English translation. Here we read of Verdi’s exertions to get the right cast. He set his heart, for instance, on Varesi “because of his way of singing, and because of his intelligence, and even because of his small and ugly appearance.” He then adds a telling remark that might give comfort to several baritones of my exper­ ience: “You will say he sings out of tune, but that doesn’t matter since the part would be almost totally declaimed.” In several letters the “lion of Busseto” bullies his hapless librettist Piave: “How wordy you always are!! . . . do it in a way that doesn’t force me to think of it as work tossed off just to get it done . . . c o n c is e s t y l e . . . f e...