Don Carlo, Royal Opera House, review

Rupert Christiansen applauds a magnificently realised production of Verdi's Don Carlo.

Anja Harteros makes a full-blooded Elisabetta in 'Don Carlo'
Anja Harteros makes a full-blooded Elisabetta in 'Don Carlo' Credit: Photo: Alastair Muir

This was one of those rare and blissful evenings in an opera house when the full nobility of Verdi’s mature genius was communicated by voices adequate to its beauties, depths and demands. I am still reeling from the impact.

In the title-role, Jonas Kaufmann took a little time to warm up: the wistful intimacy of Io la vidi doesn’t come easy to him. But he soon found his stride, producing a flood of gloriously expressive and shapely singing alongside a sympathetic characterization of a troubled and volatile young man.

His Elisabetta was Anja Harteros - a match made in heaven, both vocally and visually. Nobody since Caballé in her prime can have sung this music with such rapturous, full-blooded confidence as she does: there was something generous, expansive, luminous about every phrase of Tu che le vanità and the three duets with Carlo conjured up worlds of complex feeling.

Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros in 'Don Carlo'

Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros in 'Don Carlo' (Alastair Muir)

In comparison Mariusz Kwieicień’s Posa seemed a bit flatly standard-issue - a very fine voice, but where’s the personality to animate it? - until in Act IV he moved into a higher gear for a stunning death scene which earned him the evening’s biggest ovation. As his antagonist Filippo, Ferruccio Furlanetto radiated desperate trapped humanity rather than despotic savagery: his lament for loveless loneliness, sung with impeccable legato, was heart-rending.

There were a couple of minor disappointments further down the ranks. The much-admired French mezzo Béatrice Uria-Monzon replaced an ailing Christine Rice to make a belated Covent Garden debut as Eboli. Alas, she fluffed the ululations of the Veil Song and didn’t make much impact in O don fatale. Eric Halfvarson, normally so sterling, was audibly suffering from the after–effects of a throat infection as the Grand Inquisitor. The chorus, however, was tremendous.

Pappano conducted with absolute conviction - this is music he has in his bones. I only wish that he had opted for an early French rather than a late Italian edition of the score: too many marvellously potent and enriching pages are sacrificed thereby, with concision the only significant gain.

I will never be altogether reconciled to Nicholas Hytner’s production, which is marred by some hideous designs by Bob Crowley and an auto-da-fé scene so bizarrely tasteless as to teeter into the realms of Monty Python. Yet this scarcely mattered: for the chance to experience such music so magnificently realised one can only be abjectly grateful.

Until May 25. For tickets, call 0207 304 4000; roh.org.uk