Opera review: Don Carlo - Royal Opera House
OVER the past few weeks, the Royal Opera House has had to send out more than one email headed “cast change” for Don Carlo as several singers were struck down by illness.
This must have introduced considerable turmoil into the preparations and rehearsals, but the end product is glorious.
Don Carlo is one of Verdi’s most intense operas. We are all familiar with the usual boy-meets-girl, they-fall-in-love, girl-dies opera plot, but Don Carlo is very different.
It’s boy-meets-girl, girl-marries-boy’s-Dad, boy and-his-best-friend-die.
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To add some politics, Dad is the King of Spain, girl is a French princess and the Spanish Inquisition has a very sinister role to play in the proceedings.
The American tenor Bryan Hymel is excellent as Don Carlos, bringing a beautiful and powerful voice to a role which he acts with great passion
It’s the only opera I can think of in which the two leading male roles die and all the women survive (though one has to go off and join a convent and the other is thoroughly miserable at the end.) The music, however, is magnificent.
Don Carlo (or Don Carlos as he appears in the original French version of the opera) is the son of Philip II of Spain.
He is in love with Elizabeth of Valois, but his Dad decides to marry her to end hostilities between Spain and France. Unsure whether to call her “Mum” or “Darling”, Carlos, who has never much liked his Dad anyway, sinks into a pit of despair, lifted only be a pledge of lifelong friendship by the noble and trusted Rodrigo.
The American tenor Bryan Hymel is excellent as Don Carlos, bringing a beautiful and powerful voice to a role which he acts with great passion.
His duet with Rodrigo (German baritone Christoph Pohl) is the best known aria from the opera, and one of the most powerful duets for two male singers in any opera, and Hymel and Pohl perform it perfectly.
At the end, the big hug between the two characters was as much two fine singers congratulating each other on a beautiful performance as their roles confirming their friendship and loyalty.
Meanwhile, America soprano Kristin Lewis brought a lovely voice and intense anguish to the role of Elizabeth of Valois, sacrificing her happiness for her country, while Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk, in the other main female role of the wicked Princess Eboli, seethed and plotted in wonderful style.
While all this is going on, Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov as Philip II conveys the King’s insensitive manner until the moment comes when he realises that his young wife has never loved him.
His outburst of grief as he sang of his disillusionment was so convincing that one almost felt sorry for him.
This is a long opera with each of the principal characters given long arias in which they are alone on stage.
In an opera house as huge as Covent Garden, this is both a challenge and a great opportunity and all the singers rose splendidly to it.
As always the Covent Garden orchestra accompanied them superbly, though I several times had the feeling that the conductor, Bertrand de Billy, was not imposing great variation in his reading of the score.
The lushness of Verdi’s music is always a pleasure to hear, but sometimes a little more crispness would have improved matters.
This production is the third revival of a 2008 production by Nicholas Hytner which has been deservedly acclaimed.
The sets range from the simplicity of cut-out trees in the forest where Carlos meets Elizabeth to the glory of the King’s golden palace, with a brutal burning at the stake of heretics in the courtyard outside.
Sadly, they have given up the flames which never really worked, but what’s an auto-da-fé without flames?
Despite the faults in the staging and musical variation, the standard of the singing an acting make this a production well worth seeing.
It is Verdi at his most powerful performed in a manner that brings out what a grand opera this is.
Box Office: 020 2304 4000 or roh.org.uk (until May 29)
