Germany Verdi, Macbeth: Soloists, Chorus of Hamburg State Opera, Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra / Tomáš Hanus (conductor). Hamburg State Opera, 12.9.2026. (DM-D)
The naked man on the announcements for the production of Macbeth opening the 2026/27 season of Hamburg State Opera and the knowledge that the director is the company’s artistic manager, Tobias Kratzer, led to expectations of something unusual and potentially borderline problematic, possibly even scandalous.
Instead, Kratzer’s production was very much in line with his work in Hamburg so far, a rendering based on a deeply felt, intellectually thorough and honest understanding of the opera, its music, its characters and its plot. All this was permeated by a genuine love for art with all its details, expertly executed in terms of stagecraft. Food for thought, definitely, but comparatively low-key, unspectacular, stringently narrated.
A semi-circle of steps formed the back of the stage, occupied predominantly by the chorus. They were dressed in black, with merely hands and head showing in the subdued light when they performed the witches who propelled or commented on the events of the plot, in words or quietly. Their movement was choreographed so as to suggest humanoid creatures. When they revealed the future to Macbeth, the scene, with Macbeth watching doubles silently enact the predicted events, reminded me of similar revelatory scenes from Goethe’s Faust (staged by Mephisto). We also saw an imagined idyllic family scene with Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and their son, with Banco and his son present as well. Lady Macbeth was the loving mother cutting a crown from paper, fastening the ends with glue stick and placing it on her son’s head. On at least one occasion, the chorus members took off their black robes to reveal more colourful attire as the people of Scotland gently bemoaning their fate under Macbeth’s rule. The light was predominantly dim for the scenes with the witches and changed to brighter light onto the carpet (rolled out by the chorus for the domestic scenes). For scene changes, a line of bright lights came on at the front of the stage, facing the audience, obscuring everything behind it and increasingly forcing me to close my eyes when they came on.
The chorus, directed by Alice Meregaglia, sang with much differentiation of moods in the dark scenes of the witches, and their lament as citizens had some of the depth of the chorus passages in Nabucco. Kartal Karagedik and Nino Machaidze sang Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. They each put an enormous amount of effort into their singing, which possibly suggests that their voices were not (yet?) quite ready for these demanding roles. Karagedik sounded rougher than the role calls for to express the character’s evil nature. Machaidze’s voice was both beautiful and strong, able to carry above the chorus. The register blend to reach the highest notes was not always successful, however: those highest notes were pitch perfect, but were created with a great deal of visible and audible effort (shoulders straightened, head raised and moved forward, and mouth opened very wide). They sounded as if produced by a different voice altogether, breaking the musical flow as a result. Alexander Vinogradov gave Banco a suitably noble vocal dimension, and Dovlet Nurgeldiyev sang Macduff’s aria with a well-rounded, mellifluous voice.
Conductor Tomáš Hanus was making his debut at Hamburg State Opera. The key feature of his rendering of the score was urgency. There was an ongoing restlessness to the music. This underscored the tension created by the images of the undulating movements of the chorus of witches, and it contrasted with both the oppressive dim lighting of the witches’ scenes and the brighter light for the domestic scenes. It also drove the intensity of the singing.
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
Featured Image: Kartal Karagedik (Macbeth), Nino Machaidze (Lady Macbeth) and chorus © Monika Rittershaus
Production:
Director – Tobias Kratzer
Set and Costume design – Rainer Sellmaier
Lighting design – Michael Bauer
Chorus director – Alice Meregaglia
Dramaturgy – Laura Schmidt
Cast:
Macbeth – Kartal Karagedik
Banco – Alexander Vinogradov
Lady Macbeth – Nino Machaidze
Lady Macbeth’s Lady in Waiting – Mariana Poltorak
Macduff – Dovlet Nurgeldiyev
Malcolm – Colin Atkins
Physician – Chao Deng
Macbeth’s servant / Murderer / First Apparition – Christopher Jähnig
Second and Third Apparition – Inés López Fernández
King Duncan – Michael Brandt
Macbeth’s son – Gabriel Böttcher
Fleance – Willy Löffler
Macduff’s children – Ben Paradowski, Johanna Piechowski, Orla Renken