Don Carlo: Metropolitan Opera On Demand

https://www.metopera.org/season/on-demand/opera/?upc=811357013984

Don Carlo
Giuseppe Verdi
Metropolitan Opera On Demand
#CoronaCouchOpera, Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn

4.5-stars

I’ll keep this brief. I just scraped in on catching New York’s Met Opera free nightly opera stream. On this occasion, it was a chance to revisit one of my certain favourites, Don Carlo. I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen this opera but I’ve seen this Met Opera production by English director Nicholas Hytner on two occasions, March 2013 and April 2015 with different casts. Hytner’s original production premiered in November 2010 with this on-demand offering filmed on my birthday, 11th December. It turns out, on that day, I was in Los Angeles sitting through another Verdi masterpiece, Rigoletto.

In any of its various revisions, Verdi’s sublime, monumental drama is a work that binds plot with music in a triumph of art. And for this, the Met has assembled an extraordinary cast to satisfy the heavy demands required.

Hytner’s notable contribution is seen in the outlining of palpable personal connections and riveting action that responds coherently with the music to which Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s purposeful guidance brings out the work’s ongoing tension with refined musicianship from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The only problem is that Bob Crowley’s stylised set designs rarely feel supportive despite the excellence of his own sumptuous period costumes and Mark Henderson’s evocative lighting.

Set at the height of the Spanish Inquisition in mid-16th century France and Spain, the storyline is a festering drama around the King Philip II of Spain’s marriage to Elizabeth of Valois - daughter of the French king and formerly betrothed to Philip’s son Don Carlo - after a deal is struck as part of a peace treaty between the two monarchies. Elizabeth and Don Carlo are in love but duty to her people stops Elizabeth from refusing the king’s hand. What ensues are personal agonies played out against political unrest as church and state lie at uneasy crossroads.

‪French tenor Roberto Alagna is convincingly passionate as an emotionally laden Don Carlo. Russian soprano Marina Poplavskaya, equally burdened by concealed love, delivers a sophisticated performance as a thoroughly radiant and uncannily courageous Elizabeth. And ruling with starved compassion as Philip II, cavernous Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto meshes the king’s public and private affairs in a sensational, brooding manner.

Amongst the tragedy, 19th century opera’s greatest bromance, stoked with rapturous music and tenderness, is the beautiful and poignant relationship between Don Carlo and his trusted friend Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa. In British baritone Simon Keenlyside’s virile and untiring performance, Rodrigo is armoured in heroism and centred with loyalty, his death a heartfelt blow to Don Carlo and audience alike. Fuelling the drama too is the vengeful court aristocrat in love with Don Carlo, Princess Eboli and Russian mezzo-soprano Anna Smirnova is a galleon of riches in the role, producing a whirlwind stunner with Act 4’s famous aria, “O don fatal", after having confessed to Elizabeth that it was she who told the King that Elisabeth and Carlos were having an affair.

Adrenaline runs rampant through the work with highlights coming one after the other: Act I’s pledge of loyalty between Don Carlo and Rodrigo, Act 3’s riveting trio of Don Carlo, Rodrigo and Princess Eboli when she threatens to tell the King that Elisabeth and Carlos are lovers, as well as the massed of the act’s concluding auto-da-fé scene, Philip II’s sleepless night while deliberating over his wife’s barren love for him and punishment of his son in Act 4 and Elizabeth’s eventual aching aria, wishing to consign herself to death, at the haunted tomb of Charles V.

I guess I wasn’t so brief after all!