 Guido Gatti has compared elements of Bloch's opera to the music of Modest Mussorgsky.He has also written of the different treatments of the Macbeth story by Giuseppe Verdi and Bloch in their respective operas on the subject, with Verdi being more "realistic" and Bloch being more in keeping with the symbolist era in art at his time.After the premiere production, the opera was staged in 1938 in Naples, but was then banned on orders of the Fascist government.