ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth by the contemporary Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino, and its premiere production, directed for Frankfurt Opera and the Ensemble Modern by Achim Freyer in 2002. Sciarrino’s Macbeth is, by the composer’s own account, the product of long reflection and gestation. In Sciarrino’s view, the opera responds both to what he sees as a wilful self-isolation and deafness to previous musical achievement within the hardcore avant-garde of the 1970s, and to his sense of a contrary lack of rigour and facile eclecticism in more recent composition. Sciarrino’s style in the opera insists on maintaining a relatively narrow dynamic range. The effect of this is to throw attention with a particular intensity onto individual notes or timbres that are often prolonged beyond their “normal” duration, especially in winds and brass, where prolongation may lead to some decay of intonation.
