When Verdi famously declared he wanted his Lady Macbeth to have a “harsh, stifled, dark” timbre, with “the voice of a devil”, he probably didn’t mean for his suggestion to be taken quite so literally. Heard in its original 1847 Florentine version thanks to Fabio Biondi and his Europa Galante, Verdi’s take on the Scottish play is here spectacularly hamstrung by the casting of said lady. German soprano Nadja Michael is a potent stage animal, as anyone who’s seen her Salome for David McVicar will attest, but her voice at this stage can only offer up a vague approximation of the music. It’s difficult to believe that anyone could have greenlit her involvement, her heavy vibrato ungainly and her intonation so flawed that caterwauling approaches euphemism in some places.