{TABLE} Macbeth .......... Verdi {/TABLE} OPERA IRELAND'S new Macbeth excited advance interest on a number of levels. It's directed by Dieter Kaegi, the company's artistic director designate. It's conducted by Alexander Anissimov, principal guest conductor of the NSO and much appreciated for his work at the Wexford Festival, appearing in opera in Dublin for the first time.
The evening opened as it continued, with a rich and heady mixture of pathos and drama from the RTECO in the pit and an intensity of expression which reached up into - and often seemed to fill out - an intentionally murkily lit and spare production, darkly designed around the hollow of a sloping curve by Bruno Schwengl.
Anatoly Lochak delivered Macbeth as a perplexed character, driven, at the prompting of his wife, by compulsions or demons he doesn't quite comprehend. The approach worked best in the earlier part of the work the vocal security diminished towards the end, too.
Karen Notare was a gutsy, manipulative Lady Macbeth, not always concerned to be subtle either of voice or character, but often thrilling in extremis and at her rivetting best in the hot and cold crisis management of the banquet scene with Macbeth's private visions to contend with.
Stanislav Schwets, making his professional operatic debut, was a sonorous, solemn Banquo, and Raul Melo a stylish Macduft, who demanded just a little more than his voice had to deliver.
Kaegi dealt with the movement of the witches' chorus by resorting to three modestly immodest dancers (unconvincingly choreographed by Verina Hayes) and handled the men of the chorus with more sympathy than the women, whose circular groupings directed too much of the singing away from the audience. But, in spite of these shortcomings, and a more than fair share of first night accidents, this must count as one of the most gripping opera evenings of recent seasons in Dublin.
