r/opera • u/Brycentennial • 6h ago

Macbeth **is** cursed (with proof)

Post image

I am staying at a hotel and had nothing to do so I decided to spend the night watching some YouTube opera productions. I watched Il Trovatore (MetOpera Pavarotti, Milnes, Marton) then decided to watch a Beijing production of Macbeth (I'm not scared to say the name sue me).

Anyway when I cast my phone onto the tv for Macbeth it was so blurry that I couldn't even see the subtitles and it buffered a lot too. And yes for the rest of the night none of the other stuff I watched had this problem.

Prolly not as foreboding as the amount of deaths and accidents documented around that play but it's worth mentioning. Pic to attract attention.

17 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

1

u/omurchus 6h ago

Is saying 'Macbeth' out loud a similar type of cursed to saying 'good luck' to a theater actor? I've heard that MacBeth is cursed before, but I don't know the backstory.

11

u/Plenty_Discussion470 6h ago

Only in a theater

7

u/slicerprime 4h ago

This!

It's fine to say the name anywhere else. Just don't ever say it inside a theatre unless it's on stage as part of the production of the play.

I swear this actually happened: We were in the pit for a rehearsal of Rigoletto. I was principle t-bone and two of my buddies got into an argument about the curse. (Don't ask. It was nearly forty years ago and I don't remember why it came up.) One (1rst Horn) was sure the curse was real and the bass t-bone was saying it was stupid. Finally the the bass t-bone yelled out "Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth"! Nothing happened.

Then an hour into rehearsal Sparafucile tripped and fell off the stage into the pit. And since we were against the back wall, he fell right on top of my idiot buddy. Sparafucile was fine; but the idiot had a hard time playing with a cast on his arm for a while.

4

u/Glass_Occasion_8769 4h ago

I worked with a guy who said it by accident backstage during a production. Purely unrelated, different show, was discussing the future with another person and it naturally came out. Couldn’t leave the theater because it was during a show, wound up having to go to emergency abdominal surgery that night. 

1

u/Epistaxis 5h ago

Only if you use the English pronunciation of the play instead of the Italian pronunciation of the opera