Lady Macbeth - From Head Conspirator to Wimp :: essays research papers fc

Lady MacbethFrom Head Conspirator to WimpThe story of Macbeth by Shakespeare is sensation of his most read and most loved plays. It was not unlikely that out of all of his plays that Macbeth would be one of the few successful plays that would be turned into an opera house. Verdi wrote the opera with librettists Francesco Maria Piave and Andrea Maffei. The opera was written around 1846 and premiered on March 14, 1847 at the Teatro dell Pergola in Florence, Italy. A few years later the Verdi rewrite the opera adding a ballet into it and taking out some things and was performed at the Teatre Lyrique in Paris on April 21, 1865. This opera in comparison to the play begins with the ternary scene of the play. Unlike some of Verdi and other composers other operas the dialogue of Macbeth closely follows Shakespeares dialogue throughout the entire opera. It has been said that the words throughout the opera are ore often than not a literal translation of Shakespeares work.All of this inform ation is fine and gives us a general misgiving of who wrote the opera and when, but what I want to focus on in this paper is the Prima Donna of the opera by Verdi Lady Macbeth. Although she is an integral part to both(prenominal) the play also and since the opera is so closely related to the play, I will focus on the opera by Verdi. Through a portion analysis, evidence on how Verdi saw his Lady Macbeth, and a discussion of her development through her arias, I will discuss how Lady Macbeth began as a cleaning lady thirsty to become Queen and ends as a woman that was willing to and did take her own life.One of the lines of the play the Lady Macbeth said was very arouse that gives you the character of Lady Macbeth in one statement and Verdis opera shows this. She says look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent undert. (I. v. 67-68) This is the dissertation statement of Lady Macbeths life until the bitter end. Lady Macbeth is Macbeths wife, a deeply ambitious woman who lusts for power and position. Early on she is the stronger and much ruthless of the two, as she urges her husband to kill the King, Duncan, and seize the thrown. Lady Macbeth exploits her sexual hold over Macbeth as a means to persuade him to commit massacre after murder.