“Macbeth” by Giuseppe Verdi ♡

Notes on the Libretto

Macbeth presents an unusually complex textual history for an early Verdi opera. Francesco Maria Piave prepared the libretto from Shakespeare, but portions were also revised or supplied by Verdi’s friend Andrea Maffei; modern critical and performance sources accordingly credit both men. The opera first appeared in Florence in 1847, then underwent substantial revision for Paris in 1865. Among the changes were Lady Macbeth’s new Act II aria, the chorus “Patria oppressa,” and a new conclusion in which Macbeth’s death occurs offstage and the opera ends with a hymn of victory.

Preparing the Italian–English text repeatedly exposes Piave’s compressed, sometimes deliberately archaic diction. In the sleepwalking scene, for example, “Di sangue umano / Sa qui sempre” cannot be understood through the ordinary modern sense of sapere: sapere di here means “to smell of,” giving “It always smells of human blood here.” Likewise, “carole armoniche” in the witches’ scene refers not simply to songs but to harmonious round dances, an important distinction when the stage direction explicitly has the spirits dancing around Macbeth.

Elsewhere, retaining Piave’s imagery proved preferable to smoothing it away: Macduff calls Macbeth “quel tigre”—“that tiger”—while the battlefield’s fragore is not merely a sound but the “din” of battle. Such details preserve something of the libretto’s terse, darkly theatrical character.