page_title: Macbeth (opera)
section_title: Roles
hierarchical_section_title: Macbeth (opera) / Roles
caption_attribution_description: Català: Soprano Marianna Barbieri-Nini
context_page_description: Macbeth is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on William Shakespeare's play of the same name.
  Written for the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, it was Verdi's tenth opera and premiered on 14 March 1847. Macbeth was the first Shakespeare play that Verdi adapted for the operatic stage.
  Almost twenty years later, Macbeth was revised and expanded in a French version and given in Paris on 19 April 1865.
  After the success of Attila in 1846, by which time the composer had become well established, Macbeth came before the great successes of 1851 to 1853 which propelled him into universal fame. As sources, Shakespeare's plays provided Verdi with lifelong inspiration: some, such as an adaption of King Lear were never realized, but he wrote his two final operas using Othello as the basis for Otello and The Merry Wives of Windsor as the basis for Falstaff.
  The first version of Macbeth was completed during the time which Verdi described as his "galley years," which ranged over a period of 16 years, and one which saw the composer produce 22 operas.
caption: Soprano Marianna Barbieri-Nini, the first Lady Macbeth
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