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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/23\/arts\/music\/macbeth-review-met-opera-nyc.html?emc=edit_nn_20260924&nl=the-morning&segment_id=226986",
    "parsed_content": "Performances in N.Y.C.Fall Show Lineup\u2018The Holes\u2019\u2018America, Who Hurt You?\u2019\u2018Garry Starr\u2019\u2018Paranormal Activity\u2019AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTCritic\u2019s PickReview: At the Met, a Triumphant Baritone in a Dystopian \u2018Macbeth\u2019Quinn Kelsey commandingly charts each step in Macbeth\u2019s decline in Louisa Proske\u2019s postapocalyptic setting of Verdi\u2019s opera, which opened the Metropolitan Opera\u2019s season.Listen \u00b7 8:11 min Share full articleLise Davidsen and Quinn Kelsey as the Macbeths.Credit...Sara Krulwich\/The New York TimesBy Oussama ZahrPublished Sept. 23, 2026Updated Sept. 24, 2026, 11:06 a.m. ETMacbethNYT Critic\u2019s PickSee more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra m\u00e1s de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de b\u00fasqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google \u201cFair is foul, and foul is fair.\u201d The most famous line in Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cMacbeth\u201d has the simplicity of a nursery rhyme. It\u2019s so simple that it\u2019s easy to gloss over its meaning, a singsongy doggerel whose language is more tuneful than profound.In her Metropolitan Opera debut, the director Louisa Proske adapts the witches\u2019 chant into the guiding principle of a gripping new production of Verdi\u2019s \u201cMacbeth,\u201d which opened the company\u2019s season on Tuesday. With two thoroughly committed stars as Macbeth and his Lady, and a conductor with a penchant for high-octane drama, the show lent fresh tension and heart-stopping insight to a popular opera and its even more popular source material.The production takes place in opera\u2019s trendiest time period, a postapocalyptic dystopia; Montana Levi Blanco\u2019s costumes pit Tudor and Elizabethan elegance against Jon Bausor\u2019s settings of blasted concrete walls and ornately styled interiors. Fog gathers amid a general air of lawlessness, and the witches, sounding plummy but looking like 16th-century zombie-peasants, skitter atop mounds of rubble. As the stage revolves, the witches peek voyeuristically around corners, delighting in the mayhem they have set in motion. In Adam Silverman\u2019s lighting scheme, the singers cast long, foreboding shadows, revealing the menace within them and the menace stalking them.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTAgainst this backdrop, the baritone Quinn Kelsey gives a stupendous performance that hits a high-water mark in his Met career. He has already distinguished himself as a Verdian in \u201cRigoletto\u201d and \u201cAida,\u201d using his generous, earthy timbre to imbue his characters with disarming humanity. His Macbeth is an altogether more sophisticated creation. When he enters, remarking on a day that feels somehow both foul and fair, his voice has a noble roundness and philosophical contemplativeness. His voice retains its refined grain as it rises through his range in gorgeous swells. This Macbeth is a good soul in a rotted landscape.ImageKelsey\u2019s Macbeth is a good soul in a rotted landscape.Credit...Sara Krulwich\/The New York TimesBy Shakespearean standards, \u201cMacbeth\u201d is uncomplicated, with a linear plot, an unambiguous moral perspective and a hero with a clear tragic flaw. At the same time, its facileness can make it feel inert; it\u2019s hard to believe that much is at stake with a cartoonishly evil antihero. The average theatergoer spends more time deciding whether to park a little too close to a fire hydrant than Macbeth spends deciding to kill someone.Kelsey\u2019s triumph lies in the way he steadily charts each step in Macbeth\u2019s decline. In the dagger soliloquy, a snarl creeps into his otherwise gallant sound, and his Macbeth roars with panic as venom overtakes his veins. After he murders King Duncan, his guilt-wracked voice peals forth in clear tones, the last gasp of a noble mind. Later scenes find him hollowed out, and by the time he sings Macbeth\u2019s great Act IV aria \u201cPiet\u00e0, rispetto, amore,\u201d he is void of self-pity and full of self-recriminations, almost at peace in his self-loathing, his legacy deservedly tarnished. The Met restored the aria \u201cMal per me,\u201d which Verdi cut when he revised the score, giving Macbeth an opportunity to regret his foolishness.Kelsey\u2019s highly individual technique fits the role particularly well. Verdi baritones often prize an unbroken legato, a steady emission of a rich, rounded, balanced sound. Kelsey is livelier, mixing straight tone with purring vibration and huskiness with brief, revelatory moments in the sun. His voice reacts dynamically to Macbeth\u2019s struggles with the demons overtaking him.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTKelsey\u2019s performance is woven into the foul-and-fair paradox of Proske\u2019s production. Even Ran Arthur Braun\u2019s fight choreography, both explosive and balletic, contributes to the unsettling effect of a dissembling world. Naturalistic attacks seemed to slow midair and land gracefully, and clashing swords gave off pretty sparks. The Met restored a portion of the often-cut ballet, pitting a gleeful re-enactment of Duncan\u2019s murder (choreographed by Jorrell Lawyer-Jefferson) against the suavity of the conductor Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin and his Rolls-Royce of an orchestra.Throughout the show, N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin pulled at the opera\u2019s tensions. The strings swooned while the brasses obliterated everything before them. In the overture, pointed woodwinds and an oddly dusky harp played against type. The announcement of Duncan\u2019s murder swirled with flashes of the hair-raising drama that Verdi would master in his late-career Requiem. Tiny details added shape, too, as when N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin rode the violin melody in Banquo\u2019s aria while pushing the accompanying figures into the deep background, creating a sense of dimension in a piece that might otherwise sound pro forma.ImageDavidsen, the world\u2019s leading dramatic soprano for German repertoire, sings four big arias as Lady Macbeth that test the range of her technique.Credit...Sara Krulwich\/The New York TimesGoing into opening night, all ears were on Lise Davidsen\u2019s Lady Macbeth. With her poise, stamina and majestic tone, Davidsen has efficiently consolidated a position as the world\u2019s leading dramatic soprano for German repertoire. Verdi\u2019s opera, though, presents different challenges. Lady Macbeth has four big arias that test the entire span of a soprano\u2019s vocal range and the thoroughness of her technique.Davidsen\u2019s sound was patently thrilling even as she negotiated the score\u2019s difficulties with caution. She is a tasteful, circumspect singer, so she was never going to steamroll her way through the coloratura obstacle course of the letter scene. Her close attention to tempo and unity with the instruments that doubled her melody may have cost her some vocal presence. Having cleared those hurdles, her voice pealed on top with seraphic force, and her cadenza had freedom and imagination. \u201cLa luce langue\u201d and the drinking song were also admirably sung despite some awkwardness.Hands down, the highlight of Davidsen\u2019s evening was the sleepwalking scene. As her Lady walked through a gallery of distorted mirrors, she saw clearly for the first time what she had done, singing sorrowfully but without indulgence. Her bedchamber, once a cloistered, claustrophobic space of thickly piled velvet, was almost unrecognizable, a scorched ruin. As her voice floated through its upper reaches, it caught the light. An artful decrescendo revealed her remorse, and in an inverse of Macbeth\u2019s trajectory, Davidsen\u2019s Lady finally found her nobility, rising to a lambent high D-flat before passing away.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTImageKelsey, center, as Macbeth.Credit...Sara Krulwich\/The New York TimesKelsey\u2019s interpretation is so strong that he pulls all the characters into his orbit. Macbeth\u2019s deputy, Banquo, and his rival, Macduff, are his dramatic and musical foils. Banquo, sung by Ryan Speedo Green with a strong, even, somewhat subdued vocal profile, is a good but not great man whose ordinariness means he passes below the radar of the meddlesome witches. As Macduff, the tenor Freddie De Tommaso injected Italian style and genuine vitality into the show, with a juicy timbre, pinging high notes and a few sobs and sighs. It was cathartic to feel the pained humanity of someone who wasn\u2019t already half-dead on the inside.In a dramatic sleight of hand, Macduff emerged from the chorus of refugees right after they finished a quiet, deeply felt rendition of \u201cPatria oppressa.\u201d Nameless and forgotten amid so much sound and fury, the chorus became the audience\u2019s mirror, a reminder of the human stakes of unchecked ambition.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
    "published_at": "2026-09-23T16:38:25+00:00",
    "author_name": "Oussama Zahr",
    "site_name": "The New York Times",
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    "ai_headline": "Review: At the Met, a Triumphant Baritone in a Dystopian \u2018Macbeth\u2019",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Quinn Kelsey Triumphs in Met Opera's Dystopian Macbeth",
    "ai_excerpt": "Quinn Kelsey delivers a stupendous performance as Macbeth in Louisa Proske's postapocalyptic production of Verdi's opera at the Metropolitan Opera. The review highlights Kelsey's nuanced portrayal of Macbeth's decline and Lise Davidsen's powerful Lady Macbeth.",
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