FIRST NIGHT REVIEW

Opera: Don Carlo at Covent Garden

There are no flames in this revival, but that lets you concentrate on the extraordinary music of Verdi’s anticlerical masterpiece
Kristin Lewis as Elizabeth and Bryan Hymel as Don Carlo
Kristin Lewis as Elizabeth and Bryan Hymel as Don Carlo
CATHERINE ASHMORE

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★★★☆☆
Does it matter if the chemistry is low in Don Carlo? Verdi’s unhurried, imperfect, anticlerical masterpiece is a drama of public and private sacrifice, of isolation, doubt and monstrous certainty. Save for Princess Eboli’s Veil Song, there is little remission from suffering. The local colour that interested Verdi was not the touristic twinkle of Spanish guitars, but the black and gold bulk of crypt, cathedral, palace and prison.

The grandest set piece in Don Carlo is a grotesque display of sadism, as heretics are led through the crowds in Valladolid to be burnt at the stake. The most intimate duets are spiked with paranoia and suspicion or wrapped in the tearful gauze of chastity, as two people who should have been lovers sing