Fri April 24 2009
Power Verdi: Stoyanov, Valayre Mesmerizing in Berlin Staatsoper “Macbeth”

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The Berlin Staatsoper “Macbeth” had a cast of which any company would have been proud in any era (…) Sylvie Valayre, who has established Lady Macbeth as one of her signature roles and has dominated the history of the Staatsoper production.
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… my own experiences with the pairings of Macbeths and Lady Macbeths in performances I attended over the past 42 years. Although I have experienced wondrous performances from singers in both roles, I believe that none were better matched than Stoyanov and Valayre.
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… Valayre, has “owned” the role in this production, and her physical performance, as opposed to the singing itself, will later receive the paragraph of its own that it deserves. … Valayre’s extraordinary skills. It is in two of the early Verdi roles, Lady Macbeth and Abigaille in “Nabucco” (which she is scheduled to sing next year at San Diego Opera), for which she has achieved deserved fame.
I have never heard the difficult passages that Verdi wrote for Lady Macbeth sung so beautifully.  It is ultimately one of the great, highly dramatic bel canto roles, (…) with leaping intervals and the mixture of coloratura passages with highly dramatic passages that they use to define strong-willed women.
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Valayre clearly demonstrates that every note that the Lady sings, from the legato of the haunting La luce langue to the festive Si colmi il calice,  can be sung expressively and with great beauty. It is a joy to hear her.
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... her aggressive, physical performance which matches Verdi’s leaping music. Valayre and Verdi combine to concoct as manic a combination as one can imagine in the operatic medium, with a costume that accentuates the mania.
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[In act II scene III] Valayre was positioned on the runway just above the audience’s first row and presented a rousing performance. Had Stephan Elliott, producer of the aforementioned film Priscilla seen her, he might have reconceived some of the scenes intended as homage to the outer limits of feminine fashion and performance.
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In the longer history of Verdi productions, the Staatsoper “Macbeth” will be considered to be an extravagant  episode in quixotic design, but as a testament to observance of high standards in the performance of Verdi’s music, the 2009 revival ranks among the great performances of Verdi’s “Macbeth”.
Opera Warhouses

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