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Jean-Kristofer Bouton as Macbeth | Photo: Craig Fuller 

Canadian baritone Jean-Kristofer Bouton had missed the opening night of Mid Wales Opera (WNO)’s nine-venue tour of the 1865 version of Verdi’s Macbeth due to illness, but you wouldn’t have guessed it from his committed singing in the title role on the second performance. This is an opera that stands or falls more than most on the quality of the two main principals, and in Bouton and the Welsh soprano Mari Wyn Williams who sang Lady Macbeth, MWO struck gold; both were more than equal to the vocal and theatrical challenges of their dramatic soliloquies and duets.

Bouton vividly depicted Macbeth’s swings from confidence to collapse and Wyn Williams, commanding the stage, struck a perfect balance between virtuosic, well-pitched coloratura and the raw sound that Verdi apparently wanted from his soprano. The supporting cast were all exemplary, with Robyn Lyn Evans, a wonderfully Italianate tenor, outstanding in Macduff’s big aria when he learns that his wife and children have been murdered.  

Exemplary too were the professional chorus, coping brilliantly with the difficult task of enunciating the English text (by Jeremy Sams) clearly, even in the fast ensembles (diction from the principals too was first-rate). The production also featured a locally-recruited amateur chorus whose appearance in the exile scene made a poignant contribution to the drama - very well sung and inevitably evoking contemporary resonances. 

The cast of Macbeth at Mid Wales Opera | Photo: Craig Fuller 

The real success of any MWO production, however, is due to the skill and imagination of its artistic directors, conductor Jonathan Lyness and director/designer Richard Studer, and the hard work of their tiny team, especially production manager Bridget Wallbank and costume supervisor Jill Rolfe. Lyness’s effective reduction of the orchestral score was played by twelve members of Ensemble Cymru, and conducted with his usual, unfussy control. Studer’s designs made a tremendous impact; the simplest of sets was dressed with stylish, well-lit drama, with curtains of chains, tall black panels that were studded with stags’ antlers and swung back to reveal red padded linings that suggested coffins, and a skeleton-like tree branch. Soldiers were jackbooted in black uniforms, nuns in cream habits turned into furies, the witches opened proceedings in Sixties-style tweed office suits in shades of dark green and purple with a hint of tartan. A handful of blood-red feathers punctuated Lady Macbeth’s white headdress worn with a slinky ball gown. At the end, Macbeth’s body was gently covered with the leafy branches that had symbolised Birman Wood. 

Macbeth is rarely performed and was new to almost all the cast and presumably to most of the audience. It is a scandal that because MWO recently lost all its Arts Council Wales funding, this is likely to be its last large-scale production and it is possible that the company may fold after the Small Stages tour that it hopes to put on this autumn. If that happens, the loss to communities throughout the length and breadth of Wales of the chance to experience live professional opera of this standard will be colossal. 

Until 23 March | www.midwalesopera.co.uk