In the world of the theater, it’s called “The Scottish Play” as uttering its name, except in performance, is considered asking for it.

In the world of opera, it’s “Macbeth,” say it loud, sing it proud.

“We don’t call it ‘The Scottish Opera,’” Taconic Opera general director Dan Montez says with a laugh. “But there’s a different Verdi opera, ‘La Forza del Destino,’ which is the one you’re not supposed to say when you’re actually in the theater.”

Chances are, that other opera won’t be mentioned as Taconic Opera presents Verdi’s “Macbeth” at Yorktown Stage Oct. 16 through 18 and at Harrison High School on Oct. 24.

Yes, these witches move.

In a season that saw the 23-year-old Rockland Opera Society disband rather than compromise the quality of its productions, Montez is expanding his reach with a down-county performance in the gleaming new Harrison High School auditorium.

Still, the fate of other opera colleagues weighs heavy on him.

“I’m sick to my stomach about Rockland,” he says. “And Hartford did the same thing. There are opera companies and symphonies that have been around 50 or 60 years that are disbanding. I’m so sad for them all.”

He says Taconic was hit hard last year and its future was in doubt. He and his board of directors, he says, took it as a wake-up call.

“We knew we couldn’t just try to survive anymore, but had to grow and change more drastically if we wanted to continue to bring this amazing art form to Westchester.”

He credits Taconic’s survival to his board of directors, all of whom do their part.

“They are out there pounding the pavement and going to corporations and businesses and helping us to get grants.”

That legwork paid off last year when Taconic received its first National Endowment for the Arts grant.

When the NEA called to tell Montez he was one of just 66 opera companies to earn a grant, they had other news.

“The big news for them was we were the ones with the lowest budget,” he says, laughing.

“They said ‘We were amazed, when we saw your show, at the quality you produced with that little amount of money,’?” he says.

True to form, the witches in “Macbeth” — there are 22 of them — will have to share cauldrons.

Verdi calls for a huge chorus in “Macbeth” and Montez obliges with metropolitan-area singers who make Taconic Opera a home-grown Lower Hudson Valley tradition.

“We have that as a philosophy, not just as something that’s convenient,” Montez says. “Most opera companies are sort of a flavor-of-the-month organization, importing singers as needed. But if you make singers travel all the time it’s really tough.”

The metropolitan area also encompasses the Metropolitan Opera, whose singers, Montez says, like to sing with Taconic to run things through before they try them at the Met.

The opening-night cast Oct. 16 at Yorktown Stage will debut Jerett Gieseler in the title role, and Francesca Mondanaro as Lady Macbeth.  They will appear also on Oct. 18. Taconic favorites Constantinos Yannoudes and Samia Bahu will return in the same roles in the Saturday cast at Yorktown Stage and on Oct. 24 in Harrison.

They won’t be alone.

“Women alone — we have 22 — that’s a lot of witches, in Verdi’s largest choral work, larger than ‘Aida,’?” says Montez, who is charged with directing this oversized coven. (Jun Nakabayashi is musical director and conducts the show.)

And the chorus doesn’t just stand there, either; they have six costume changes.

“It’s pretty nasty for them and there’s a lot of music for them to learn, but they really came through,” Montez says. “They’re pretty amazing.”

Verdi based “Macbeth” on the Shakespeare text: the story of an ambitious husband and wife who’ll stop at nothing to get what they want.

Because it’s opera and the singing elongates the words, Montez says it comes down to distilling “the best things that drive the story and the most famous quotes from the Shakespeare play.”

Lady Macbeth’s “Out, damn’d spot! Out, I say!”  makes the cut, Montez says, as does Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger which I see before me.”

And if your Italian isn’t what it could be, simultaneous translations appear on a screen over the stage.

“In this case, we’ll put up as much of the Shakespeare as possible,” he says.
Montez has ambitions of his own for Taconic Opera.

He hopes, he says, to settle into White Plains or at Purchase College before too long, envisioning his 12-year-old enterprise as “a concrete regional opera company for the area.”

The opera has performed across the region, at Purchase, at Peekskill’s Paramount Center for the Arts, and at Yorktown Stage.

“We’re feeling our way forward and trying to grow,” he says.

Say it loud, sing it proud.

What: Taconic Opera’s production of Verdi’s “Macbeth”
When and Where: Oct. 16 and 17 at 8 p.m.; Oct. 18 at 2 p.m. at Yorktown Stage, 1974 Commerce St., Yorktown Heights. Oct. 24 at 7 p.m. at Harrison High School, 255 Union Ave., Harrison.
Tickets: $47 for orchestra aisle, $42 for orchestra center and side aisle, $37 for side, $32 for rear. (Season tickets for two operas and Mozart’s Mass in C minor are $79, $76, $71 and $66.)
Call: 914-245-3415
Web: www.taconicopera.org

Photo by Dan Montez/Taconic Opera