[This post refers to the Don Carlos prima, which took place on 3 March. Yes, I know, the post is almost as long as the opera…]
Met audiences have been blessed this season to hear both of Verdi's grands opéras, Les Vêpres siciliennes and Don Carlos. Sadly, both have been given in Italian translation. In The Operas of Verdi, Julian Budden asks, "How much store did Verdi himself set by the original language?"
Certainly he never imagined that [Don Carlos] would be performed outside France in any language other than Italian, unless it were the vernacular of the country concerned. But it should be borne in mind that Italian was still in most theatres the accepted lingua franca of opera… There is at least one indication that Verdi was attached to the French text.
He cites a letter from Verdi to Aida librettist Ghislanzoni, in which Verdi "held up as a model the chorus of women that begins the second act of Don Carlos and which, he said, 'in the French poem has color and character.'" Budden concludes, "There can surely be no doubt that a French performance is preferable to an Italian. Words and music fit better together; the drama in every situation leaps out with far greater force."
It is the twenty-first century (by one reckoning). The Works of Giuseppe Verdi is a mere decade shy of completion. Racist twaddle of "the-music's-only-Verdi" variety no longer holds sway among respectable people and institutions. In recent years, the Châtelet, Covent Garden, San Francisco, Boston Lyric Opera, and other companies have mounted Don Carlos in French. Surely the mighty Met can do the same—or give us Don Carlos in English, our local lingua franca. Il flauto magico, Margarete, and Les Maîtres chanteurs are not tolerated on New York stages, and Verdi's works deserve no less respect.
Like Vêpres, Don Carlos presents uncomfortable parallels to current politics. In his dialogue with Rodrigue, Philippe claims:
With blood alone I can bring peace to the world…
As dealt out by me, death has a fertile future.
The Grand Inquisitor brands Rodrique treasonous ("un gran ribelle") because the marquis speaks truth to power and fights for the ideals that the Church claims to uphold. For all of today's noxious delusions about "progress" and "the end of history," nihil sub sole novum, wouldn't you agree?
Then there is the baneful alliance between power and fundamentalist religion, whose homegrown and exotic varieties are also an enduring plague. Andrew Porter notes that Verdi called the auto-da-fé "the heart of the opera" and that "when he came to revise [Don Carlos] it was the only scene he left unchanged." In the Met's staging, this episode unfolds with all the terribilità of a kindergarten pageant. "Well, no one needs a Regietheater snuff show," I thought. But maybe a gonzo, violent orgy is precisely what is called for, church and crown being the original P.T. Barnums of our sorry world, with new generations concocting diversions sickeningly constant in their depravity.
Don Carlos inhabits a crepuscular zone between Rodrigue's shining ideals and the all-too-concrete misery born of realpolitik: the French peasants' hunger and cold; the living death of Elisabeth, a young woman packed off to the bed of an unloved old man; the scorched flesh of the "heretics"; Rodrigue's own shattered corpse. In this universe of shadows and regret, the characters are caught up in webs of dreams: the "bei sogni d'or" and "vago sogno" whose memory haunts Elisabeth and Carlos; the "sogno divin" and "sogni mentitor" debated by Philippe and Rodrigue; the "sogno strano" shared by Carlos and Eboli; Carlos' erotic delirium ("O prodigio"); Philippe's "Ella giammai m'amò," marked "come trasognato"; and, of course, the dreamlike and inexplicable apparitions of Charles V.
Conductor Fabio Luisi, in his Met début, nailed this aspect of his assignment, establishing from the opening measures the opera's mournful, inward tinta. Weeping motifs permeate Don Carlos, from the "Prélude et introduction" through the chorus of Flemish deputies, "Ella giammai m'amò," and the bridge leading into "Ma lassù ci rivedrem." Weird, irresolute wind figures (as doleful as those in Act III of Tristan), often associated with Carlos' guilty love for Elisabeth, ripple through the score, along with sickly trills ("O prodigio," the Act III prelude, Philippe's monologue). Luisi's flowing and beautifully detailed reading played up the contrast between the monumental swagger of Don Carlos' public music and the opera's troubled undercurrents. As Martin Bernheimer wrote, "New York hasn’t heard Italian opera performed with such enlightened sensitivity for years. Maybe decades."
The Met of late has a dreadful track record with Italy's most distinguished maestros (Carlo Maria Giulini, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, the late Giuseppe Sinopoli, Riccardo Chailly), who have conducted rarely or never at the house. Here's hoping that Fabio Luisi returns, early and often.
Ferruccio Furlanetto's Philippe is one of the great interpretations that I have witnessed. A seamless integration of word, musical utterance, and gesture (like Peter Mattei's Marcello in La bohème earlier this season), it embodies dramma per musica in its most potent form. For me, Furlanetto's timbre has never been especially glamorous or distinctive. He has always been about the total package, as in his 1987 Salzburg Leporello under Karajan—a stunningly vivid portrayal and display of sprezzatura.
Furlanetto's mature sound can be grey and craggy, but his voice has grown over the years, and his musicianship has become ever more searching, as heard last season in the lilting, melancholy cantilena of his Brogni in La Juive. He began "Ella giammai m'amò" in a restless half-sleep, moulding a legato line worthy of Casals. He had barely finished his last note when a roaring ovation erupted—much deserved, but obscenely disruptive of the intimate mood that Furlanetto, Luisi, and Verdi had worked so hard to create. The last line of his duet with the Inquisitor was thrillingly sung, with both extremes of his voice rock-solid and his words sharp with bitterness and despair.
Sondra Radvanovsky's Elisabeth is a remarkable achievement, though less sure than her Hélène in Vêpres. On opening night, Act I alternated great beauty (the hope and encouragement she conveyed to her war-weary people) with less happy touches: trombone honks instead of soft, rapturous attacks in her duet with Carlos ("O ciel!"). Radvanovsky opted to break the rising phrases of "Non pianger, mia compagna," though she could take them in one breath given her excellent support and easy, radiant top. (The final cadenza was a thing of shimmering, gossamer splendor.) A wonderfully telling moment came when her Elisabeth cited the "base outrage" inflicted upon her by the king. Furlanetto's Philippe reacted with a furious glance, but Radvanovsky's Elisabeth held her ground, firm in her quiet, defiant anger.
Radvanovsky's best singing came in the Act III and IV ensembles. She summoned heart-rending vulnerability for Elisabeth's lament that she is "alone and a foreigner" in the Spanish court, and pled for the Flemish people with the boldness and nobility of spirit that are the sine qua non of Verdi style. A few squally attacks aside, "Tu che le vanità" was grand and beautifully shaped.
Luciana d'Intino as Eboli displayed tremendous agility (roulades that faded away into nothingness, perky staccati), blazing high notes, a somewhat worn middle voice, and chest tones 'til the cows come home. Hers was barn-busting Verdi: broadly played, crowd-pleasing, but not quite my cup of tea. (I prefer a leaner, more French sound for this role, à la Tatiana Troyanos or even Robynne Redmon, a superb Eboli for Boston Lyric Opera.)
Dwayne Croft was an earnest and appealing Rodrigue. He had the decency to attempt the trills that Verdi wrote, he knows how to perform a révérence, and he pays heed to the music and to his fellow cast members while on stage. (That's Opera 101, I know, but it puts him far ahead of most singers these days.) His singing was a tad monochromatic: not a Rodrigue for the ages, perhaps, but intelligent and musical.
Richard Margison's Carlos had a handful of good moments—a thrillingly expansive "Carlo son io, e t'amo!", for example—and many mediocre ones. He has a tendency to sing dipthongs instead of vowels ("c[aw]sto" and not "casto," "vitt[aw]ria" and not "vittoria"), and he never really brought to life this poor cornuto of a character. Since Rolando Villazón seems hell-bent on shortening his career, singing heavy roles right away and at maximum intensity, I say: Bring him on, while the bringing is good.
Paata Burchuladze was brilliantly cast as a black-toned, hateful Inquisitor, and Vitalij Kowaljow followed up his beautifully sung Old Hebrew in Samson with a no less beautifully sung Friar/Charles V.
"You look shell-shocked," a colleague tittered when he saw me at intermission. To which my answer is: Whoever is not shell-shocked by Don Carlos does not deserve to be in Verdi's presence.
Shirley Fleming, editor of American Record Guide and critic for the New York Post, passed away last week.
From Friday's Newsday, a review by vilaine fille alter ego 
Also from Friday's Newsday, a review (with one ham-fisted edit—read "undimmed by a haze of harmonics") of Jonathan Biss's wondrous Zankel Hall recital:
My program essay for Handel's Orlando is now available online:
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