Boston Lyric Opera’s ‘Macbeth’ continues a frustrating pattern

With recent productions, BLO has been simultaneously doing too much and not enough

Norman Garrett as Macbeth in Boston Lyric Opera's "Macbeth."Nile Scott Studios

You get only one chance to make a first impression, and the first sight of Boston Lyric Opera’s recent “Macbeth” was a head-scratcher. The curtain rose to reveal a full stage, the BLO chorus dressed in muted earth tones and headscarves (widely understood visual shorthand for “hard times”), silently and pointedly staring at the audience as David Angus conducted the final bars of the overture. The stage was soon set and the drama unfolding, but that first tableau lingered in mind, as first impressions tend to do.

The most important characters in “Macbeth,” and the most interesting, are Macbeth and his lady. Verdi emphasizes this by giving them the most dynamic and compelling music in the opera. But this first tableau presented by the BLO seemed to briefly indicate that the chorus — which plays many roles, some of which can be described as “common people” — was the most important. It came across as an earnest attempt to comment about how the whims and flaws of those in power harm those without power. Opera offers many stories about this, but trying to spin “Macbeth” into one of them was very much a square-peg-round-hole situation. The next two-and-a-half hours continued a frustrating pattern that Boston Lyric Opera has displayed in recent years, that of simultaneously doing too much while not doing enough.

Last season, Boston Lyric Opera staged two aesthetically unconventional but dramaturgically flat retellings of messy old stories — Mozart’s early opera “Mitridate” and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical “Carousel.” The Scottish play, though even older, has stronger narrative bones. In the original play and Verdi’s operatic adaptation, and too many other adaptations or retellings to list here, “Macbeth” deftly captures and crystallizes the destructive, vicious impulse that hides inside so many, waiting for the opportunity to be unleashed.

The two leads in BLO’s production were appropriately bloody, bold, and resolute. Baritone Norman Garrett’s expressive face and regal, commanding voice deftly channeled Macbeth’s downward spiral through murder, madness, and paranoia, culminating in his lament near the end of the opera, when he finally comprehends the weight of his deed. As Lady Macbeth, one of the heftiest soprano roles in the repertoire, Alexandra LoBianco was a searing presence, her voice elastic and full through several octaves of range. She was particularly outstanding during Lady Macbeth’s drinking song at the disastrous dinner party, first earnestly cheerful, then strained and manic as she tried to distract the guests from her husband’s public crashout. (Seeing your buddy’s bloody ghost will do that to a guy.)

The central couple had a glinting, subtle electricity between them that quickly got overshadowed by stilted blocking — a few perfunctory gropes and a roll on the table to show that power is a potent aphrodisiac. We’ve seen it before.

Alexandra LoBianco as Lady Macbeth in Boston Lyric Opera's "Macbeth."Nile Scott Studios

The supporting cast was bolstered by several strong presences. Bass Zaikuan Song made a tender and paternal Banquo and a quietly terrifying Banquo’s Ghost, while tenor David Junghoon Kim was an avidly shining avatar of justice as Macduff. As Malcolm, BLO regular Omar Najmi’s shattering, silent grief at the news of Duncan’s death was just as memorable as his piercing call to arms later.

The chorus was also kept on its feet. The high voices made for a striking coven of witches, with their shadows dancing on the bare walls. “Patria oppressa” brought the full company on stage as refugees displaced by Macbeth’s war, holding candles and photographs in what looked like homage to Argentina’s Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.

Yet director Steve Maler’s production continually created a somewhat disorienting distance between the audience and the Macbeths’ bloody business. Amy Rubin’s sets were so minimal and sparse — a white half-shell backdrop spattered with what looked like old blood or bullet holes, crates and tables, with one crystal chandelier that did double duty as the witches’ cauldron — that characters, be they leads or choruses, tended to look small and insignificant, with some exceptions. Once the top half of the backdrop lifted to reveal the trees of Birnam Wood, backlit in blue, the stage somehow looked smaller for being less oppressively empty.

Here is the larger problem facing Boston Lyric Opera; it’s begun to feel like it’s marking time, towards … what, exactly? Next year’s 2026/27 50th anniversary, perhaps? Maybe the completion of renovations at the company’s new Opera and Community Studios in Fort Point, which is scheduled to open in March 2026 with a run of “Das Lied von der Erde” — the Mahler orchestral work, not an opera.

It might be tempting to blame the recent stagnant feeling on the fact that the company lacks a home stage, but it has struck gold even so, most recently with the San Francisco Chinatown-set “Madama Butterfly” in fall 2023. In the meantime, audiences will have to wait until spring to actually see BLO’s next full opera. This year’s gala concert, a Wagnerian revue featuring Christine Goerke and Morris Robinson, is next month, one night only, on a Wednesday.

MACBETH

Oct. 10. Presented by Boston Lyric Opera. www.blo.org