The Boston Lyric Opera delivered some of the most glorious singing we are likely to hear this season in last weekend’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth.

The powerhouse baritone of Norman Garrett in the title role endowed this Macbeth with a brooding self-destructiveness that positively chilled us. Time and again one wanted to tell him to stop, to listen to his self-doubts, to take a step back before it was too late. But when this too-proud man clearly realizes the miserable and humiliating fate awaiting him, it is too late for him to do anything except pour his anguish into an aria, “Pietá, rispetto, amore.” It is difficult to feel any pity for Macbeth, but Garrett’s rich, carefully shaped singing revealed the pathos within the man once prophesied as a “king hereafter.”

Macbeth would have needed a whole backfield of guardian angels to help him counter the driving insistence of Lady Macbeth, here sung to perfection by Alexandra Lobianco. One of the most demanding roles Verdi ever wrote, it required Lobianco to dazzle in her high notes, while generating revulsion with her low ones. How many octaves does this singer have in her tessitura? Every note she sang left me eager to hear the next.

Indeed, the more accurate title for this opera should be Lady Macbeth. She has two huge arias in Act I almost back-to-back, “Vieni! t’affreta!” when she learns about the prophecies of the witches, and then “Or tutti sorgete” in which she enlists all the demons in hell to help her achieve her plan to make Macbeth king.  She tingled spines as she took us through the evolution her character’s darkest thoughts. And then, of course, her terrified remorse comes later in “Una macchia è qui tuttora!” as she futilely attempts to wash the blood of the murdered king from her hands.

Bass Zaikun Song expertly took on the sometimes-ghostly role of Banquo. He hauntingly projected the foreboding Banquo feels after having encountered the gathering of witches who predict that while Macbeth will one day be king, Banquo’s offspring shall rule Scotland for seven generations. With the fierce intensity he projected in “Come dal ciel precipita,” Song elevated Banquo from being something of a secondary character to a critically important one.

Since Verdi assigned the principal male roles to deeper voices, tenor David Junghoon Kim as Macduff gets the big aria, “Ah, la paterna mano.” His soaring, impassioned rendering demonstrated why he has won numerous awards in competitions in many parts of the world. He is a true Verdi tenor, and a talent to watch. In an opera that focuses so often on the malevolent ambitions of the Macbeths while often ignoring the toll on them, Kim fills the aria with the naked emotions of a man who has just learned that his wife and children have been murdered [offstage] by Macbeth and curses himself for not having been there to protect them.

Macbeth is the tenth opera that Verdi composed. He had already made a name for himself with Nabucco, Ernani and Attila. But the operas that cemented him into the repertoire – La Traviata, Il Trovatore, Aida, Rigoletto — were all in the future, as were his two other adaptations of Shakespeare, Otello and Falstaff. In Macbeth, one senses that he is trying to do something different from the standards that filled Italy’s regional opera houses then in the 1840s. Although he employs his hallmark tada-dum, tada-dum, tada-dums throughout, his arias, “Ah, la paterna mano” excepted, are surprisingly untuneful, even if dramatically apt. Nothing like the waltz from La Traviata is to be found in Macbeth.

Some 18 years later, Verdi was offered a chance to present a revised version in Paris. The fact that he made several major changes suggests that he was not completely happy with it as it was first composed. The version presented by Boston Lyric Opera drew on what were judged to be the best parts of both scores.

Steve Maler, who has brought Shakespeare to the Boston Common for three decades, tackled this sung version of a play he knows well with a sure hand. Working with what would appear to be a bare-bones budget, he for the most part uses what resources he has well. Chief among them is a chorus who in Verdi’s version takes on the role of the three witches. With the help of costume designer Amanda Gladu, Maler dresses them as peasants. No specific location is evoked. No kilts. This makes this tale of murderous ambition extend universally beyond medieval Scotland. And when he brings the witches to the shadow-casting footlights, the harsh, light on their faces makes an indelible impression that things are not likely to go well.

Set designer Amy Rubin provided a cyclorama which, like the costumes, was neutral and non-definitive. It offered a screen on which the shadows of the characters loomed over the action in Eric Southern’s very inventive floor-level and tormenter-aimed lighting that gave the impression of a German expressionist silent film. Near the end, the backdrop parted for a thoroughly unexpected coup de thèatre as Birnam Wood suddenly appeared. That said, the effect would have carried even more power had it been saved until a couple of scenes later when the forest advances on soon-to-be-vanquished Macbeth.

If Maler had had more rehearsal time, perhaps he could have blocked his principals in ways that sharpened the characterizations they so successfully captured in their singing. There were times when they appeared to be wandering the stage. And a few times they simply parked and barked on the stage apron. And what of that oscillating chandelier that signified palace interiors as well as a witches sabbath? The Colonial Theater stage must have some ancient traps that could have made a convincing cauldron appear in a flash.

Special kudos go to conductor David Angus whose large orchestra sat on the theatre’s main floor in front of the stage rather than in the pit. He never allowed his players to overwhelm the singers. Everything worked seamlessly between them as well as it did with the chorus. He carefully modulated all the elements involved to provide a full and satisfying Verdian sound, and lined up all the ensembles with signal precision

He supported the singers of several smaller roles as if they were the leads. Vera Savage, though given only limited opportunity to show off a shimmering mezzo soprano, made a strong impression as Lady Macbeth’s Lady in Waiting. Tenor Omar Najmi and Devon Russo, both in good voice, made, respectively, a very slender and young-looking Malcolm and a convincingly concerned doctor. Among the Apparitions, as the witches were called, Angela Yam, Zizhao Wang, and Josie Larsen stood out.

With blind ambition in politics so rampant in our time Maler presented Shakespeare’s cautionary tale wrapped in music by Verdi in a way not to browbeat but to raise the nagging question that has no easy answer: Why do dictatorial urges exist in all ages?

Stephen Landrigan is a former print journalist and concert presenter.