By Catherine Reese Newton [Salt Lake Tribune, 19 October 2009]

In some ways, Verdi’s “Macbeth” — with its witches, ghosts and buckets of blood — is a logical choice to open an opera season right before Halloween. In other ways, it’s a daring choice: There’s no love triangle, the central characters spend more time brooding than emoting, and almost all that blood is shed offstage.