Don Carlo

Conductor-Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production-Nicholas Hytner

Don Carlo-Roberto Alagna
Elizabeth of Valois-Marina Poplavskaya
Princess Eboli-Anna Smirnova
Rodrigo-Simon Keenlyside
King Philip II-Ferruccio Furlanetto
Grand Inquisitor-Eric Halfvarson

The Metropolitan Opera is treating us in our hibernation to some streams of marvelous past performances.  It is interesting to see these films again.  I am having very different reactions, Don Carlo being no exception.  I feel no inclination to compare Marina Poplavskaya to anyone.  She had a brief but glorious career.  She crossed my path only between 2009 and 2011. I enjoy her today very much.  I think she became a real estate agent in Manhattan.

The peak of Ferruccio Furlanetto's career is the great scene here where he laments that his wife does not love him.  It is a great opera with a great cast.  They are mostly giving us traditional productions.

Smirnova isn't that interesting in the role of Eboli, but she gives a barn-burning "O don fatale."  Each character has a wonderful scene.

This is the era of the Inquisition, and Spain was at its center.  They ruled over a protestant land and killed many people.  As political operas go, this one is at the top of the heap, with glorious music, great characters, and here a beautiful performance.

Don Carlo on medici.tv

I am watching Verdi's Don Carlo from the Royal Opera on medici.tv with many of the same cast as the Metropolitan Opera in HD in 2010.  There are:

Marina Poplavskaya (Elizabeth of Valois)
Simon Keenlyside (Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa)
Ferruccio Furlanetto (Philip II)

The production is the same.  The main differences are the conductor is Antonio Pappano, Eboli is sung by Sonia Ganassi and Don Carlo is sung by Rolando Villazon. I think I prefer Ganassi to Anna Smirnova.

It's different.  How is that possible?  I think that Pappano is very sensitive to the great beauty of this opera, perhaps Verdi's most beautiful.  I can see Don Carlo played for romance and beauty rather than intensity and melodrama.  For this perspective Marina is the perfect Elizabeth.  She grows on me.

Villazon retains all of his intensity, but I think his voice has acquired roughness.  His voice lacks the power to project his personal intensity.  My opinion hasn't changed about him.  But for the beautiful Don Carlo perhaps he is right.

Now we are in the third act and Carlo raises his sword against his father.  Posa steps between them and the theme from the duet of Carlo and Posa plays in the orchestra.  We have a Leitmotiv.  Philip knights Posa.

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Faust in HD

Faust: Jonas Kaufmann
Marguerite:  Marina Poplavskaya
Méphistophélès:  René Pape
Valentin:  Russell Braun
Siebel:  Michèle Losier
Marthe:  Wendy White
Wagner:  Jonathan Beyer

Conductor:  Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production:  Des McAnuff

Today in Faust Live from the Metropolitan Opera in HD we had the privilege of hearing loud boos from the audience for the production designer Des McAnuff.  The production is a bit Eurotrashy, but after the bizarre production in Santa Fe--Marguerite on roller-skates--it didn't really seem too boo worthy.  One of the advantages of being in the house over being in a movie theater is that one can participate in the post production audience antics.  I "bravo" at the movies, but it does seem a bit silly.

Faust in this production is an aging bomb maker between the two world wars.  The current trend is to explain the opera as a dream or hallucination between the poison and dying.  Faust flashes back to his own youth, and the costumes change.  Faust and Mephistopheles always dress alike.  Perhaps Satan is his alter ego. The sets are spare, abstract and gray.

The goal is to cast the sincerity of the medieval religious fable into the cynical frame of the present.  The sincerity of the music plays against this cynicism.  I was prepared for the production to be confusing, but I did not find this to be the case.

In case there was any doubt about who the opera is really about, our Marguerite Marina Poplavskaya's face was projected on the curtain for extended periods throughout the opera.  These were films.  Her facial expression would change gradually, but she never blinked.  When Faust is still in his laboratory, Marina enters and sits down at one of the work stations.  He is hallucinating about a real woman.  I enjoyed her performance, but her expression in the Jewel Song was rather textbook for my taste.  In her interview with Joyce DiDonato she worked on her sewing the entire time.  Perhaps she has never sewn anything before.
 
As an old man, Jonas Kaufmann's hair will apparently go straight.  His problem in this role is that it is hard to think of him as a cad.  He was irresistible.  That is the idea, isn't it? 

Musically this Faust was somewhere between the extremely somber San Francisco Opera version and the really quite gay Santa Fe Opera version.  (Remember I am an old woman who has lived in a time when "gay" had a variety of meanings.) 

René Pape was explaining to the very elegantly dressed Joyce DiDonato that he had no desire to be a tenor.  Why, in fact, would he wish to be anyone but René Pape?  He was simply awe inspiring.  In his interview he greeted his mother who was supposed to be watching from a movie theater in Nuremberg, not too far north in Bavaria from Munich where Jonas is from. 

I enjoyed the calming effect of the modern context.  I cried anyway.

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Don Carlo Encore

Verdi's gift--among others--was to find the personal in the political. The political plot of Don Carlo is about the power of the Inquisition over the King in sixteenth century Spain. We see the Inquisition burn people at the stake, and we hear of misery and mayhem in Flanders where Philip also rules.

But it is the personal that wins our hearts. My sense of this opera is that it does not work at all without the Fontainebleau scene at the beginning. In order to understand the characters we need to see Carlo and Elisabeth fall in love, to be young and impulsive, before we can grasp what happens to them. Hearing about it isn't enough.

The amazing thing about this opera is how every character is fully realized, with individual hopes and fears.

We see the power of Philip II, but we also see his sadness that his wife does not love him. We see Elisabeth torn between her love and her duty. We see Rodrigo's friendship with Carlo while he defends the king against him. We see Eboli's plot to destroy the queen and her later regret. Finally we see Carlo trying to rise above his fatal love.

All this detail also makes it Verdi's longest opera. Don Carlo exists in the largest number of versions of any Verdi opera. It was written for Paris where the audience has to be out in time to make the train home. Having once missed the last train in Paris, I know well what grief this can cause. So things are put in and then taken back out. Then it was translated into Italian, and the whole process started over.

It is a long, somber and ultimately very beautiful opera that grows on me with repeated viewings. Perhaps it is the wonderful performances in this Met production that win my heart.

The only interview that survived the encore cuts was the one with Roberto Alagna as Carlo. His only aria is in the often cut Fontainebleau scene, but he has many wonderful duets with Eboli, Rodrigo and Elisabeth. Would we want to miss where Roberto says duets are like making love, and host Deborah Voigt looks at the camera as if to say "He went there?" Priceless. Whatever he's doing works for me.

Marina Poplavskaya's Elisabeth is warm and inward. We see her impulsively fall for Carlo while remaining true to the unloved Philip.

Ferruccio Furlanetto's Philip remains a magnificent triumph. Keenlyside wins for acting, but Anna Smirnova not so much.

Many hold Don Carlo to be Verdi's greatest opera. It lacks a certain flash that we normally associate with Verdi, but it wears very well.

The last scene was accompanied by the 10 pm fireworks at the nearby State Fair.

Don Carlo in HD

Today's simulcast of Verdi's Don Carlo didn't sound anything like this:



Marina Poplavskaya sings it like this:



Rather astoundingly different.


Don Carlo-Roberto Alagna
Elizabeth of Valois-Marina Poplavskaya
Princess Eboli-Anna Smirnova
Rodrigo-Simon Keenlyside
King Philip II-Ferruccio Furlanetto
Grand Inquisitor-Eric Halfvarson

Conductor-Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production-Nicholas Hytner

The version is all five acts.

Act I. a wonderful black and white abstraction of the forest at Fontainebleau where Elisabeth de Valois and Don Carlo fall in love begins the opera. Then it is announced that as part of the treaty with Spain Elisabeth is to marry King Philip II of Spain, not his son Carlo, destroying their hopes for a beautiful life. I swear I have never seen it with this scene included. It is utterly charming and for me completely changes the character of the opera. The beauty of opera lies in the personal.

There is very little color throughout the opera. Most of the costumes are black or white. Red and gold are the only other colors. Each setting emphasized the meaning of each scene. This made the drama very vivid and easy to follow.

Ferruccio Furlanetto played the King in LA, too. He's still quite wonderful. Simon Keenlyside was up to the lyricism of Rodrigo, though I continue to have doubts about him as a Verdi singer.

But perhaps the Met is trying something different here. Except for our wild Inquisitor, and perhaps Eboli, the entire cast is exhibiting a sweeter, more lyrical approach to Verdi. I thought it worked. One grows tired of being punched all the time. And perhaps the sweet tempered French Canadian conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin helped to lead the production in this direction.

Roberto Alagna was very strong in this part. If the other characters don't overwhelm him, then Carlo becomes truly the center of his opera. His singing was strong and sensitive throughout. I loved him.

One of the high points was when the host, Deborah Voigt, was interviewing her tenor for Fanciulla, Marcello Giordani, and asked him what was his favorite part of the opera? He responded by kissing her. Very funny. Maybe I would like Fanciulla more as a comedy.

Met Turandot

Turandot.............Maria Guleghina
Calàf...................Marcello Giordani
Liù.....................Marina Poplavskaya
Timur.................Samuel Ramey

I have seen the Zeffirelli production of Puccini's Turandot from the Metropolitan Opera before: once with Placido Domingo on television and once in the house with Andrea Gruber. It's very beautiful and worth seeing again. I admit to being a little freaked out by the men creeping around the stage, but the rest is gorgeous.

Marina Poplavskaya was a wonderful Liu, but I've seen equally wonderful singers in this role. Marcello Giordani was a powerful Calaf, but I have witnessed other wonderful tenors in this role.

But this is the first time the ice princess has come to life for me. She is terrified of this stranger as she has never been before. When Liu kills herself in order not to reveal the name, Turandot feels this as she has not felt anything before. She feels herself fall in love and the loss of her power with genuine terror. We hear the words "my first tears" as we have never heard them before. This is a deeply emotional Turandot who sees her life crumbling before her eyes. We feel her fall in love. And we see him see her fall. We know as he does that it is safe for him to tell his name, that with this word his triumph is complete.

The Turandot of Maria Guleghina is acted like nothing I have ever seen before. Brava. And the singing was also good.

HD

In the theater often the sound came and went, though not during "Nessun dorma" as I had bet someone, and occasionally the picture went with it. Boo. Pull yourselves together, gang.

The HD surprise, who will host, was really a surprise: Patricia Racette. She has moved up a rung, hopefully due to her fabulous Trittico in San Francisco. She was excellent.

She interviewed Charles Anthony who sang the Emperor. He's been at the Met for over 50 years.

She interviewed members of the brass section because of their recently released CD.

She interviewed Marcello and Maria together and brought out the wonderful rapport between them, part of the explanation for the beauty of this performance.

Let's hope we see her again in this role.
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