Don Carlo, Royal Opera House dreamteam style

Don Carlo - Royal Opera House, 4 May 2013

Jonas Kaufmann wasn't ill; Anja Harteros turned up. Given that she'd marked half her lines at the general rehearsal earlier in the week (every singer's prerogative of course, but rare here) I had wondered. If success is defined as exceeding expectations, then the opening night of this third revival was a winner even before a note was sung.

Neither hit their best form immediately. In Harteros's case, and not for the first time, a Callas aphorism came to mind - something like she had a poor first act, a good second act and a great third act.  Squawky patches gradually smoothed out until she crowned the evening with a fine Tu che le vanità.

A curiously bottled first scene aside, Kaufmann sang magnificently. Hytner's conception of Carlo as an awkward, lovesick teenager in the Hamlet mould sat more easily with the role's creator, Rolando Villazón, than the naturally assured Kaufmann, but he didn't shirk from trying.

Mariusz Kwiecień made an elegantly sung but dramatically inert Posa, while Béatrice Uria-Monzon as Eboli was the opposite - the most engaging and least listenable figure on stage.

As he has done every night since this production began, Ferruccio Furlanetto blew everyone else off stage. King Philip gets the best music in the opera, and Furlanetto knows exactly what to do with it. Hytner's emphasis on Philip's isolation was amplified by the anguish and resignation in Furlanetto's Ella giammai m'amò, the tiny sob in his voice.

If the pace seemed to sag a little when Furlanetto left the stage, part of the blame must be placed on Pappano's shoulders.  The orchestra played beautifully, fleet and fluid, and there were some exquisitely detailed passages, but the theatrical element was not as strong as we have come to expect. A little overstatement never hurt anyone.

production photos (above) Catherine Ashmore/Royal Opera House

curtain call photos (below) intermezzo.typepad.com

 

Thanks to Kyoko, here are the curtain calls of the first night and below, the general rehearsal:

Comments

[michael]

perhaps this dream cast will catch fire from the get-go in subsequent performances. i very much like this production - it gets me early on...when elizabetta enters and points her rifle in the direction of the audience. as this is a shared production (with the met, amongst others) i have a question about the sets. are the sets (and costumes) constructed and replicated in each theatre or are they packed up and shipped to the currently producing venue?

[marco]

The first time I heard Harteros was at the General Rehearsal before her Met debut. I had had only excerpts before on youtube and was quite intrigued by her and found the Traviata and Fiordiligi arias very good. It was to be a joint debut with Dorothea Röschmann who was the much more known singer than Harteros. The rehearsal started at 11 and at 11.45, Harteros sang a rather underwhelming Porgi Amor. I was quite disappointed in her and thought that she must not be in good voice. Several days later she stunned all including me in giving a spectacular debut. Many years later I spoke to her about this and she said 'but it was only a rehearsal'. The same thing happened to me years later in München during the Lohengrin. So I can advise all if you are going to a rehearsal she always holds back.

[Siggy]

I'm looking forward to experiencing this first hand on Saturday but glad to read all the generally positive first night reviews. I've also got a ticket for when Haroutounian takes over as Elisabetta so I'm eager to contrast and compare - always presuming Harteros turns up on Saturday for her last performance!

[Hariclea]

packed and shipped and i remember staff here complaining about the state things are in when they come back from the Met, the only things that don't travel are the armory elements (swords, daggers etc) as too valuable and most theaters don't pay to bring them over. I bet Furlanetto's costumes were also shipped and not replicated. Carlo got new costumes across the pond, the local ones at the ROH are very detailed and valuable, hand-stitched on leather and silk.

[Andres]

Harteros stole the show. People were already dying to applaud her after the second act's duet and the aria "Non pianger, mia compagna" but Pappano was not up to it and did not stop the music. As IM says the orchestra was the weakest link. I guess that's what happens on your first day at work after a 7 month-hiatus (illness notwithstanding)...

The happiest of them all, Kwiecien, whom you could really see enjoying the homoerotic overtones stressed by the direction and had the time of this life holding, groping and touching Jonas no end.

[Ninetta]

http://www.roh.org.uk/news/cast-change-lianna-haroutounian-to-sing-role-of-elizabeth-of-valois-in-don-carlo-on-8-may

well...

[Bohdan]

I don't want to worry you Siggy but I hope that Ms Harteros has recovered from her sudden bout of "acute tonsillitis" by Saturday:

http://www.roh.org.uk/news/cast-change-lianna-haroutounian-to-sing-role-of-elizabeth-of-valois-in-don-carlo-on-8-may

[FloriaT.]

And who could blame him....? ;)

[William Lau]

@ Intermezzo
Would you be seeing the Salzburg Don Carlo, also featuring Pappano, Kaufmann and Harteros?
******
Intermezzo replies - Yes, I have a ticket.

[Weejohnnie]

Lianna Haroutounian made a superb Elizabeth on the second night - some heckling at the announcement of the substitution, including a cry of 'Why book her?' in relation to Harteros. Kaufmann again hesitant in the first act, but quickly into gear. What a great night musically, but the set and the murky lighting are poor

[pat]

Agree Lianna Haroutounian was excellent (and given a real boost by the announcer on stage informing us of Harteros' indisposition).

Not sure the opera ever quite took full flight ; whenever it took off, it seemed to come back to earth again.
Most things about were a bit like the parson's egg :
- papanno and band ; at times sublime, at others somewhat unengaging
- JK ; at times terrific, at times (first scene and attempts at "soft bits") not so.
- Eboli ; definitely mixed, but surprised how much criticism she has attracted in reviews generally
- FF ; OK, no parson's egg here. Just terrific ; how many better Philippe's has the opera stage ever seen?
- Rodrigo ; fabulous voice, and excellent performance, but at times unengaging / bland
- Grand Inquisitor / THAT scene ; terrific.

Thoroughly worth going (nearly said seeing ; like much else, the visuals were mixed) but never quite blew the socks off consistently.
But if you have never seen FF play Philippe, do not miss the chance.

[Vera]

Furlanetto is the best Philipp of our time. I'm surprised that Furlanetto will not be in Salzburg, what better Philipp can he have.
******
Intermezzo replies - Matti Salminen is a Zurich regular, which is what counts if you want to be booked by Pereira. He's still a wonderful singer, but, I agree, not up to Furlanetto's standard.

[Paul Arrowsmith]

My first experience of Jonas Kaufmann – can now understand the obsessing about him here. A voice full of colour and subtlety – and a committed actor. The pinnacle of 11 May was the cloisters’ duet with Mariusz Kwiecen. The audience roared with approval at the end of the scene.

Kwiecen made a subtle Posa, a committedly naïve idealist. I thought he tended to shout at times and his tone was gritty in places – but the prison scene was absolutely outstanding. Singing of great colour and range – his death frighteningly croaked.

Lianna Haroutounian is among my top three Elizabeths. (The others being Edith Pritchard in her graduation performance from the Royal Northern College of Music – whatever happened to her? – who was only a couple of notes short of the supreme, in this role, Montserrat Caballé).

Haroutounian suffered nobly as Elizabeth – not a demonstrative actress with a sympathetic presence. The colour is her in voice, beautifully shaded and sculpted – lacking perhaps some pianissimo but altogether she made Elizabeth an unusually commanding character.

So – musically dramatic – but dramatically inert. Bob Crowley’s legoland sets solve the scene changes between multiple locales – but the spaces he designs do not define the conflict of private passion and public duty the characters endure.

The staging is largely directionless, with no notion of how to animate and move a chorus. The bonfire of heretics – apart from some polyphonic effects with some of the chorus, heavenly voice and church bells clamouring form the roof of the auditorium – is particularly limp, motiveless movement.

Principals, largely left to their own devices, usually wandered downstage in their own spotlight to stand and deliver. The only really directed scene was the Carlos’ fit when left alone with his ‘mother’ – Haroutounian and Kaufmann at their most committed here.

[Siggy]

Great review. I was there last night and agree with most points. I thought the final duet for Carlo and Elisabetta was probably the best moment from a performance full of great moments.

Yes, I would like to have heard Harteros but Haroutounian was much more than adequate and a touching actress. They made a more than credible couple.

Can't wait to see this again on the 18th.

[Gilberto]

Yup went on the 11th.... IMHO one of the best things I have seen at The Garden recently, even without Harteros.

[SJT]

The uncomfortable truth which no-one nowadays dare acknowledge is that the Auto-da-fé scene is the work's absolute weakest dead-spot, musically and dramatically, with some abysmal and interminable stage band music (here obliterated by the intolerable dialogue-screaming monk, possibly not coincidentally)and the kind of size-is-everything stage spectacle derived from the dread Meyerbeer, the Opéra's darling. Frankly, it's a miracle they don't dance (only the presence of a fat ballet, cut here, in the previous scene prevents it from happening).

And the ROH staging is at its worst hereabouts, managing to look both cheap, empty and somehow cluttered, one whole third of the stage rendered unusable by the bit of it they're keeping back for the closing "coup-de-theatre" of burning heretics, invisible to about 40% of the audience (anybody much left of centre) and about as sensational as tea with mother.

With the Paris-required tat behind him, Verdi can then give us an actual opera, in the shape of Acts IV & V (and the same thing still happens with Aida, ironically specifically written with a view to eliminating the worst of Parisian grand operatic excess whilst preserving its better essentials. Bad luck with that).

Which is another way of saying I have never seen Act III scene 2 work on stage properly. I'm pretty sure it can't, actually (and may not have even in Paris in 1867). But it isn't usually as D.O.A. as it is here.
********
Intermezzo replies - Only the regal presence of fabulous Ferruccio Furlanetto prevents it from becoming a comedy scene. It's the only substantial chunk of the opera (apart from the prologue) that doesn't come straight from Schiller, and the contrast is all too obvious.

[Siggy]

I found most of the ROH staging to be disappointing to be honest, but yes the Auto-da-fe is just one step away from Monty Python.

The rest isn't much better to be honest, the only scene not scenically jarring was the Philip/Inquisitor encounter, but even then I found myself thinking it should have been more claustrophobically staged - too much space.

I think that in the hands of a less starry cast, there wouldn't be quite so many five star reviews for this revival.

[manou]

Doesn't the "fat ballet" provide some explanation for Carlo confusing Eboli with Elisabetta? There is I think an exchange of cloaks or masks that takes place between the two women during the ballet. In this particular case, the confusion is plausible (even though Uria-Monzon is slightly shorter than Harteros and possibly more slender that Haroutounian), but sometimes the women are so different in shape and size that the effect is comical.

But yes, the auto-da-fe in this production is Monty Pythonesque - the least said about the huge Christ head the better.

[Siggy]

I believe there's some business with a veil - Elisabetta hands hers over to Eboli, the following scena with Carlo then cunningly tying in with the earlier Veil Song. I've always though Carlo spectacularly dumb if he can't tell these women apart - vocally if not physically. But then some productions have the same problem with vastly different Giovanni/Leporello.

[SJT]

Act III opens with a scène-a-faire in which the two women swap clothes, meaning that Eboli actually goes on as Elisabetta as La Peregrina in the eponymously-named ballet (and which the uncut, Konwitschny staging I saw in Barcelona, mounts as an episode of I Love Lucy, with Eboli dreaming of married bliss with Carlo, inviting the King and Elisabetta to dinner, ruining it, and ordering take-away pizza duly delivered by Posa on a moped. I have never laughed so much in an opera house in my life: or been so angry.)

And as for mismatched supposed physical "ringers", the most glaring was quite recently, at Covent Garden, in Figaro, where in Act IV Susanna and the Countess do an Eboli/Elisabetta. Except one was the diminutive Eri Nakamura, the other the Juno-esque Annette Dasch. And, mirabile dictu, McVicar turned it to glorious comedic advantage, by having Eri cart a small orange crate around with her and stand on it every time she was impersonating Rosina. Figaro only worked out the deception when she became over-animated and fell off it, losing about seven inches in height in the process. Priceless, and the sort of detailed, situational stage direction I thought I'd never see again..

[Paul Arrowsmith]

The auto da fe can be made to work if you follow Verdi's stage directions - and his music. It's gloriously thrilling.

And the ballet music has wonderful momentum.