The Deutsche Oper Unveils A Sleek Don Carlo
Massimo Giordano plays the title role, Don Carlo, in the Deutsche Oper's new staging.
Barbara Aumueller/Deutsche Oper Berlin hide caption
Massimo Giordano plays the title role, Don Carlo, in the Deutsche Oper's new staging.
Barbara Aumueller/Deutsche Oper BerlinVerdi's Don Carlo is an essential piece of repertoire for major opera houses, but it does not lend itself easily to a fresh, compelling staging.
The opera, based loosely on an eponymous play by Friedrich Schiller, tells of a tragic love triangle during the Spanish Inquisition. Classic productions revolve around pageants of opulent crosses, towering bishop's hats, and other unequivocally Catholic imagery that can weigh down like chains around one's neck.
The music plunges the depths of human sorrow and includes some of Verdi's most brooding melodies. He also reworked the opera several times, originally conceiving it in French and in five acts for its 1867 premiere in Paris and subsequently readapting Don Carlo into a four-act, Italian-language version for its Milan premiere in 1884.
Verdi penned additional editions for theaters in Naples and Modena along the way.
The Paris and Milan versions are performed in equal measure today, according to artistic preference. The Deutsche Oper, for its new production by Marco Arturo Marelli, chose to stage Don Carlo in Italian and brought in several singers well-versed in the bel canto tradition, which is essential to any Verdi opera.
Massimo Giordano, as seen at the production's premiere on October 23, brought an ardent, penetrating tenor to the title role, passionately conveying the character's innocent longing and burning frustration with a political system against which he is powerless. As his punishing father Philipp II., Roberto Sciandiuzzi's resonant bass and consistently irreproachable use of legato were a high point of the evening, particularly in the chilling aria "Dormirò sol nel manto mio regal," in which the king confronts the isolation of his own ruthlessness.
The Venezuelan soprano Lucrezia Garcia, stepping in last minute for the internationally-celebrated soprano Anja Harteros, rose admirably to the challenge as Elisabeth of Valois. She conveyed the resignation of a woman both unhappily betrothed to Phillipp II. and beloved by Carlo while her full-bodied voice soared powerfully above the orchestra, although her dark-hued timbre lacked the elegance that one associates with the role.
As the seductive Princess Eboli, the Russian mezzo Anna Smirnova brought a coquettish presence and lush tones to the stage.
The real hero and moral anchor of the opera is the Marquis of Posa, Rodrigo, who takes Carlo's death sentence upon himself so that the prince can see to the liberation of Flanders from Spain's totalitarianism. Boaz Daniel was touchingly earnest and noble of cause, although his sensitive baritone seemed underpowered in the opening scenes, including in the duet "Dio che nell'alma infondere," in which Rodrigo and Carlo pledge an undying fraternal bond.
Music Director Donald Runnicles led a strong performance that grew in elegance as the evening unfolded. The orchestra was nevertheless more effective in bombastic passages than those that required sinuous, Italianate phrasing, although the haunting prelude into Act Three was satisfyingly cantabile and rich in tone.
The chorus of the Deutsche Oper was in fine form, bringing stamina to the seminal Auto-da-fé scene, in which the Inquisitors hunt down the disobedient and sacrilegious. Ante Jerkunica was an imposing Grand Inquisitor, and Ryan McKinny sang pleasingly as the Monk despite some strain in the upper range.
Marelli's minimalist staging underscored a sense of entrapment, mitigated by glimmers of the beyond, with two flexible structures of shimmering concrete blocks that, when aligned, were separated by vertical and horizontal spaces that formed a sign of the cross. While the set strongly recalled Marelli's 2004 production of Pelléas et Méllisande, the stage director succeeded at reducing the Catholic symbol to its most elemental, and even spiritually uplifting, form.
The set served as dungeon and forest, gallows and heaven, opening up to a cube of white light in the opening scene and closing in around the chorus dressed in gray peasant costumes during the Auto-da-fé. The priests entered in red, dutifully carrying black crosses, and set a small fire in something resembling a home grill at center stage before the stage opened up to reveal three victims tied to stakes in the background.
Marelli, who also does his own lighting, flooded the stage in red and other colors at climatic moments, adding contrast to what verged on a monotone conception. Time period costumes by Dagmar Niefind added a touch of elegance and complemented the set's shiny tones.
When the ghost of Philip II's father walked onstage as a skull-faced death angel to liberate Carlo from his oppression, Marelli's reductionist aesthetic revealed its virtue, bringing the drama into relief and allowing death and redemption to intermingle with probing ambiguity.