A monkey out of Macbeth

摘要

Dian fossey did it in the forest with gorillas, William Boyd in fiction with chimpanzees. Now a Scottish composer, Tom Cunningham, has cast baboons in an opera called "The Okavango Macbeth" to a libretto by Alexander McCall Smith. It all began after Mr McCall Smith read a book called "Baboon Metaphysics" and booked a holiday in Botswana's Okavango delta. There he ran into the author, an American primatologist who had been studying baboon behaviour for 12 years. "Female baboons clearly have some Lady Macbeth issues," observes the writer. "They all have male baboons that they want to become more alpha."