He Made His Choice Poem by gershon hepner

Harsh, unstifled in the dark,
she finds her voice and makes her man
perform in ways that, cruel and stark,
cause blood and shit to hit the fan.

She’s hard-edged, with a voice that must
be heard and be obeyed. Mistakes
are made, ambition born of lust
disastrous, but she never fakes.

Out, out, the spot goes, and the Thane
becomes a victim of her voice,
and all her subjects share the pain
she never caused––he made his choice.


Anthony Tommasini reviews a performance of Verdi’s “Macbeth” in the NYT, October 24 (“The Thane, His Lady, That Spot”) :

To appreciate the performance of the longtime soprano Maria Guleghina in the role, you must remember that Verdi wanted his Lady Macbeth to be “ugly and evil, ” and her voice to be “harsh, stifled and dark, ” as he put it in a letter. Though often strident, Ms. Guleghina’s singing was chillingly powerful. Her sustained, full-voiced lyrical phrases may have been hard-edged, but they filled the house. And her blazing top notes sliced through the combined sound of the chorus and orchestra. But I was bothered by her rhythmic carelessness, as she tried to get her earthy and unstable voice around Verdi’s often ornate phrases. In Lady Macbeth’s crucial sleepwalking scene, I wanted more tenderness and ethereal phrasing. Ms. Guleghina faked it. She certainly embodied the character. In her opening scene, when Lady Macbeth receives the letter from her husband reporting the predictions of the witches, she is awakened in bed. And after her aria, that’s where Macbeth finds her. Their tussling on the mattress makes clear that part of her sway over her malleable husband comes through sex. As Banquo, Macbeth’s comrade general, the bass John Relyea was excellent, singing with robust power, dark colorings and dignity. Macduff, who finally kills the tyrannical Macbeth, is essentially a one-aria role for tenor. The young New York-born Dimitri Pittas sang it with melting sound and dramatic urgency.

10/24/07