I’ve re-discovered Montserrat Caballe’s atmospheric recording of the Sleepwalking Scene from Verdi’s MACBETH. Elizabeth Bainbridge and Sir Thomas Allen provide world-class support as the Gentlewoman and Doctor.
Montserrat Caballe – Sleepwalking Scene ~ MACBETH – w Elizabeth Bainbridge and Sir Thomas Allen
LADY MACBETH
A spot…still here.
Out, damned spot! I curse you!
One, two, it is time!
You are trembling? You do not dare to go in?
A soldier, and a’feard?
For shame! Come…hurry!
Who’d have thought that old man
could have so much blood in him?
DOCTOR
What did she say?
LADY MACBETH
The Thane of Fife,
was he not a husband and father?
What happened?
GENTLEWOMAN and DOCTOR
Oh, horror!
LADY MACBETH
Shall I never be able
to clean these hands?
There’s blood here still.
All the perfumes of Arabia
could not cleanse this little hand.
Alas!
DOCTOR
She sighs…?
LADY MACBETH
Put on your nightgown. Come, wash yourself!
Banquo is dead, and the dead
cannot come back from the grave.
DOCTOR
This too?
LADY MACBETH
To bed, to bed …
What’s done cannot be undone.
Someone is knocking! Come, Macbeth…
let not your pallor accuse you.
GENTLEWOMAN and DOCTOR
What terror…!
Lord, have mercy on her…
Oberon's Glade 