Salzburg Don Carlo on TV

The Salzburg Festival Don Carlo will be live-streamed by Medici on Friday 16 August at 17:30 (4.30pm UK time). Good job I'll be seeing in live, as the stream isn't available in Austria. I am told that if you can't see a rights message on the page now, then you should be able to view it on the day in your country. It will also be shown on Arte and ORF2, which are unlikely to be available in the UK (but give it a try).

It will also be beamed to a few cinemas. None in London that I can see, but if you live in Ambleside, Chichester or Ludlow, Friday is your lucky day. 

*UPDATE* The Arte broadcast will be available in France and Germany only, and ORF in Austria only (plus satellite). Medici will stream live everywhere except these countries, and will be available on demand 'later'.

Comments

[Feldmarschallin]

First ARTE was going to show it at 17.25 but now apparently the new time is 20.15. I will look at both times to see if it is on.

[SJT]

And if, as you say, there are no screenings in London, you can blame the sort of exclusion contracts that the major - and indeed minor - chains all have to sign in order to have the Met or ROH relays (themselves pretty much mutually exclusive). Someone with a litigious turn of mind should examine the legality of these de facto restraint-of-trade licenses...

[Alexander]

Thanks for the information IM,looks as if I will be watching it on line here in Scotland. I am sure your Festival experience will be better than our first here in Edinburgh !!

[Gilberto]

Has anyone spotted a current promotional code for Medici? Thanks.

[Brian]

After a great deal of persistence and sheer good luck I got a ticket for this premiere. For me, the real heroes of the night were the VPO and Pappano, simply superb at every level. The staging was excellent, showing yet again that a great classic opera can be staged with imagination without the need for either, on the one hand, fossilized tradition or for, on the other hand, empty pretension fleshed out with a bit of soft pornography. The singing
was a very mixed bag. Mr Kaufmann, whom I had not heard since that execrable Munich Trovatore, was in much better form and sang very well. Miss Harteros had some splendid passages and some squally ones. Miss Semanchuk was good overall, but nothing out of the box. Se did, however, a very good Don Fatale. Mr Hampson was surprisingly uneven. He was not nearly as good as when he sang the role in Munich a few years ago. The real disappointment was Mr Salminnen of whom I have great memories from Savonlinna and Munich. He seemed to have lost both the power and the focus of his voice. It was such a pity. Overall, an enjoyable evening, but I would not rank it with the great Salzburg evenings. Current Salzburg prices call for outstanding performances, not for good routine ones.

[Siggy]

Watching on Medici tonight I can only say that Kaufmann and Harteros on excellent vocal and dramatic form, Hampson a bit dry of tone with a tendancy to shout, Salminnen a bit creaky in places but my God he's a terrifying Philip. Semanchuk a wonderful Eboli.

As far as I can see the production is fine, perhaps more amenable to camera than in-house vieiwng. Auto-da-fe disappointing but I've never really seen a good one. Waiting eagerly for battle of the basses.

Also good to see all the scenes normally cut - it might be along evening but it makes more dramatic sense.

Not to be missed I'd say.

[Patricia]

I quite agree that it should not be missed. Musically a treat Definitely not to be missed. With all the extra music it was not a minute too long. Harteros and Kaufmann outstanding vocally and dramatically The only weak link for me was the Auto da Fe scene but there again I have seldom, if ever, seen a convincing one. I prefer this Don Carlos to the Trovatore which I saw in MUnich last month Al most ruined by a too clever production. Verdi does not need to be tinkered with to such an extent. Anyway tonight was a wonderful experience and I hope there will be a DVD

[SJT]

"Also good to see all the scenes normally cut"

Like the indispensable opening chorus of woodcutters: or the big and fabulous Eboli/Elisabetta duet that prefaces "O Don fatale!"; or the duet for father and son over Posa's body. Small point: given that the conductor of this is our very own Maestro, why was/is none of this music performed at the ROH in our Lego land staging?

And purely as an aside, does Harteros actually FEEL anything in singing "Non pianger mia compagna" because I can't help noticing that if she did she wouldn't treat it as an academic exercise in largely can belto, with her mouth wrenched open wider then the Blackwall Tunnel in order to crank out the wholly wnwonted - and indeed unwanted - volume.

[Siggy]

Yes, good to see and hear all of the scenes you mentioned. For me at least, it made a much more cohesive experience from beginning to end. Musically I particularly enjoyed the father/son duet after Posa's death.

I have to admit missing much of 'Non pianger mia compagna' as I was trying to arrange sustenance to get me through the rest of the opera. I do find AH can be somewhat uninvolved which I've mentioned in posts before, but I have to say that she seemed to be more dramatically engaged in this.

I also wondered why this full version wasn't performed at ROH. But I also wondered if they were going to do the 'French original version but in Italian' why they just didn't do it in French?

[Francis]

Well, if it's indeed the "French original version but in Italian", sung by non-native speakers of either language, does it matter which language they use? I bet this cast sounds less awkward in Italian than they could possibly hope to sound in (heavily accented) French: Italian is easier to pull off.

[Siggy]

Possibly, although I actually prefer Kaufmann singing in French - that just a personal preference though.

Actually there is a rumoured Don Carlos (French) with Kaufmann at the Met in a couple of years so we shall see.

[Francis]

Germans are often relatively easy to understand when they sing (or speak) French, easier that English speakers, for instance. Which doesn't mean they don't have a thick accent. Maybe you prefer French sung with a foreign accent, many people do.

[Hariclea]

Probably mostly because they can't tell the difference either way ;-)same goes for German by the way. Don Carlo is actually even more melodic, especially in this original almost all inclusive version (bar the Posa -Carlo duet which uses the music from the Italian version rather than the French) as Don Carlos :-) ie in French. And i would tend to disagree about English speakers, the singers who are very proficient in foreign languages tend to be equally as clean in Italian, French and German for that matter. I find singers are mostly of 2 categories, whatever their native language, those who work at their languages and sing well in several and those who don't and sound foreign and with thick accents in anything and everything :-)

In performances it will also largely depend on the theater's financial ability to provide language coaches and time for singers to polish.

[Yes Addison]

SJT, I'm days tardy replying to this, but the thing I hate most about the Hytner sending the sturdy old Dexter show out on an ice floe in New York is that after 30+ years, Metgoers lost the orchestral introduction and the scene with the woodcutters and Elisabetta. And, by the way, got nothing in return, other than some negligible stage business with Don Carlo spying Elisabetta on stage while she's out shooting. There seems something wrong about that -- moving in the direction of a *less* comprehensive edition of such a great score. Was Hytner completely uncooperative with reworking this, coming up with some basic stage direction for the chorus and the soprano for 10 extra minutes? Whatever else one can say about Poplavskaya, I'm sure she would have acted her part in it well, and for the foreseeable future, I won't hear the Met's strings biting in to that wonderful opening.

Ah, well. I will always have my two DVDs (Scotto and Freni).

[Francis]

In order to be able to tell subtle differences in language proficiency, one has to be proficient in those languages oneself. In other words, what sounds like proficiency in, say, French to an English speaker may not sound like good French to a French speaker.
Out of curiosity: are you as proficient in Italian, French and German as you (obviously) are in English?

[Hariclea]

yes to your question, 100% in Italian and German and about 80% in French ;-) This is why i sometimes feel like shaking my head at comments about languages. For example hardly anyone these days comments about correct German in German operas and it is essential to it as any language in an opera. To me language is actually an essential part of the music itself. It's interesting that usually/generally most negative comments in press and internet about the language proficiency of singers comes from non-native speakers :-) I also don't think surtitles have improved the situation; they may have helped the audience, but there is great pleasure in discovering languages through music and i wonder how much of it happens today anymore. In my experience as a non-native speaker you can never be truly 100% idiomatic, but you can try to get better :-) Few singers these days have the time to make the effort. But some do, i find singers who tend to sing a lot of song repertoire as well to be generally better at their languages and a lot better at their diction :-) Also, being a native speaker is no guarantee that your diction while singing will be any good ;-) I appreciate how hard it is to learn the music and how tough things are to sing + act, etc so anyone doing more and caring about the languages too gets extra brownie points with me :-)And sadly some do loose points if they ride on the beauty of their voices alone and over years and years never improve on the language front... It's a subject that fascinates me endlessly and i can go on and on ;-))))) (to end on a slightly funnier note and give and example- i adore Corelli, really do, and years back i bought his Romeo et Juliette recording, which is an opera i adore, and oh horror of horrors! i've never actually been able to listen to the whole thing ;-) )

[Francis]

Yes, sung language is a fascinating subject. Too vast to discuss here, unfortunately.
As for Corelli, I have read numerous comments declaring him the best Romeo ever. Though among them, none from French people...His French diction is not the biggest problem, by the way. To me, this preference for Corelli's Romeo is an example of what I called in my previous post an inability to tell the difference when it comes to opera sung in a foreign language.