Macbeth

Macbeth was Verdi's first Shakespeare setting and reached the Teatro della Pergola in Florence on 14 March 1847. He rehearsed the sleepwalking scene with the soprano more than a hundred times and told her not to sing beautifully but to act; the baritone was instructed that the duet after the murder should be half-spoken. He dedicated the score to his father-in-law Antonio Barezzi. For Paris in 1865 Verdi rewrote large sections, adding the ballet the Opéra required and replacing Macbeth's death aria with a choral finale.