The Met’s Macbeth Is a Bubbling, Boiling Cauldron of Operatic Fun

# Quick overview Louisa Proske's new production of Verdi's Macbeth opened the Metropolitan Opera season to a crowd in Halloween mode. The staging emphasizes spectacle and theatrical energy: a multiplied coven of witches, acrobatic movement, and a towering chorus that frequently takes center stage. Musically, Yannick Nézet-Séguin's conducting leans toward warmth and vibrancy, while the leads—Lise Davidsen as Lady Macbeth and Quinn Kelsey as Macbeth—offer strong, if not perfectly matched, vocal portrayals.

# The chorus and staging

# Visual palette and atmosphere Jon Bausor's rotating cylindrical set and Montana Levi Blanco's costumes create a palette of ruined, rodent-colored rags streaked with blood. That bleak color scheme is the production's main note of apocalypse. Otherwise, the staging opts for moments of camp and theatrical flourish rather than unbroken dread. Proske stages the principal couple's scenes in claustrophobic, mirror-lined rooms that feel both intimate and confining.

# Vocal performances

Quinn Kelsey sings Macbeth with a consistent, warm baritone. His vocal color remains steady across moments of bravado, remorse, and terror, which can be affecting to listen to but sometimes leaves the couple's shared descent feeling less like a joined delusion and more like two different responses to guilt.

# Supporting cast and musical direction Tenor Freddie De Tommaso delivers a brassy, triumphant Macduff. Baritone Ryan Speedo Green offers an elegantly paternal Banquo. Yannick Nézet-Séguin guides an orchestra that privileges saturation and warmth—what the review calls a "Champagne sparkle"—tilting the score toward gala-like brightness rather than an exclusively dark palette.

# How the production fits the work Proske appears to aim for a psychological core—two people twisted together by mutual obsession—framed by expansive, inventive stagecraft. The chorus and crowd scenes provide a continuous, sometimes exhilarating counterweight to the inward focus on Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The result is a production that reads as both ghoulish fun and powerful opera, with occasional trade-offs between vocal style and dramatic specificity.

# Bottom line This Met Macbeth is lively, visually inventive, and propelled by a commanding chorus and strong soloists. It favors theatrical immediacy and vocal spectacle over a strictly forbidding atmosphere, making the evening more operatic entertainment than psychological horror.