UK Edition
Review
Verdi's Don Carlo a moody hit for Grange Park Opera
For her swansong before she quits the Grange to start a new opera festival in Surrey, the unsinkable impresario Wasfi Kani has programmed Don Carlo, Verdi’s epic pageant of counter-Reformation Spain. Admittedly, the score presented is the pared-down Italian version sanctioned by the composer 17 years after its Paris première, but this is still an ambitious undertaking and it is greatly to Kani’s credit that she pulls it off with such panache.
Gianluca Marciano is the primary asset: his astute conducting of the stalwart Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is warmly phrased and tautly paced without overwhelming the singers, all of whom need his support to overcome the considerable vocal challenges. This is an opera of grandly conceived confrontations that rises to several climaxes, but Marciano always keeps the bigger picture in mind, rendering even the bizarre last scene, with its dying romantic fall and final explosion of melodrama, credible and moving.
Two of the principals stand out. The Romanian mezzo Ruxandra Donose is nothing short of superb as the disruptive seductress Princess Eboli, scattering sinuous charm on her playful “Veil” song and fire and brimstone when it comes to her vengeance and remorse. Clive Bayley is also in tremendous voice as the haunted and conflicted King Filippo, trapped in a political corner by the Inquisition, which is chillingly embodied in a cameo by Alastair Miles as the Grand Inquisitor.
he Italian tenor Stefano Secco and Argentinian soprano Virginia Tola play the young lovers, Carlo and Elisabetta. He projects clearly and accurately, if somewhat relentlessly; she offers an olive-tinted, occasionally vinegary, tone, and projects only gingerly. Neither of them have much stage presence or seem engaged in the crises of their emotional drama – Tola, in particular, radiating bovine placidity throughout.
David Stout makes a bluffly sympathetic Posa, forcefully sung but perhaps too amiable to convey the character’s unswerving moral idealism. Full marks to the small but thrilling chorus and Jihoon Kim as the anonymous Monk.
Jo Davies directs resourcefully and sensibly against Leslie Travers’ versatile set, in which brutal concrete walls are made to suggest prison, palace and plaza in turn. Period kitsch is held at bay: costuming is austerely black, with atmosphere created by flickering flame and candles.
The garden of the second act or Posa’s death may work less successfully than the scenes of the auto-da-fé and Filippo’s study, and the re-writing of the denouement is certainly dubious. But what a treat to hear this magnificent opera so generously honoured.
Until July 10. Tickets: 01962 737373; grangeparkopera.co.uk
