{"id":92195,"date":"2018-03-10T14:23:44","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T13:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=92195"},"modified":"2018-03-10T14:23:44","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T13:23:44","slug":"washington-national-opera-don-carlo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/washington-national-opera-don-carlo\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington National Opera: “Don Carlo”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington National Opera, The Kennedy Center, Season 2017-2018<\/span><\/em>
\n<\/span>\u201cDON CARLO\u201d<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/span>Opera in four acts by Joseph Mery and Camille du Locle.<\/span>
\n<\/span>Musica di\u00a0<\/span>Giuseppe Verdi<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/span>Philip II of Spain<\/em> ERIC OWENS<\/span>
\n<\/span>Don Carlo<\/em> RUSSELL THOMAS<\/span>
\n<\/span>Elisabetta di Valois<\/em> LEAH CROCETTO<\/span>
\n<\/span>Princess Eboli<\/em> JAMIE BARTON<\/span>
\n<\/span>Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa<\/em> QUINN KELSEY<\/span>
\n<\/span>The Grand Inquisitor<\/em> ANDREA SILVESTRELLI <\/span>
\n<\/span>Friar<\/em> PETER VOLPE
\nTebaldo<\/em> ALLEGRA DE VITA
\nCelestial Voice<\/em> LEAH HAWKINS
\nCount of Lerma<\/em> ROBERT BAKER
\nThe Royal Herald FREDERICK BALLENTINE<\/span>
\n<\/span>Orchestra and Chorus of the Washington National Opera<\/span>
\n<\/span>Conductor\u00a0<\/span>Philippe Auguin<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/span>Chorus Master\u00a0<\/span>Steven Gathman<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/span>Production\u00a0<\/span>Tim Albery<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/span>Set Designer\u00a0<\/span>Andrew Lieberman<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/span>Costumes\u00a0<\/span>Constance Hoffman<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/span>Lighting <\/span>Thomas C. Hase<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/b><\/span>Washington, D.C., 8 March, 2018
\n\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/span>At the Washington National Opera, Don Carlo<\/i> is being given in Italian, in the short, four-act version. Tim Albery<\/b>\u2019s production in Andrew Lieberman<\/b>\u2019s sets is an austere thing of black costumes, walls of cagework (to express the trapped position of the characters) and far too many chairs. Even the gardens \u2013 two of the scenes are set in gardens, you know \u2013 provide neither flowers nor greenery. All Constance Hoffman<\/b>\u2019s costumes appear to be black, but then Thomas C. Hase<\/b>\u2019s lighting changes subtly, and the court ladies\u2019 black dresses turn out to be some iridescent material that changes to handsome russets and blues. The set is backed, in the opera\u2019s first half (the break comes after the Auto-da-fe), by a vast octagonal dome into which we are staring. In the second half, the vaulting of the dome is replaced by effulgent heavens, still within an octagonal frame. At Ely Cathedral, I was told that their eight-sided dome (the only one in England) was said to be the proper shape for a portal into heaven, and in Spain, I found that a dozen cathedrals boast this feature, evidently for the same reason. Perhaps that is the designer\u2019s message: For the first half of the opera, we are oppressed by the stonework of a ponderous earthly power; during the second, Heaven itself witnesses the action and (maybe) interferes. If so, Albery defeats his own purpose by having Don Carlo not carried off into the tomb by the ghost of\"\"<\/a> his imperial grandfather, as in Verdi\u2014instead, he stabs himself with a dagger, an operatically traditional but ineffective gesture. If you are going to have the supernatural invade your opera, why renounce it at the last? <\/span>Otherwise it was a simple, basic production of Verdi\u2019s elaborate grand opera, with little of the sparkle he hoped for in his grandest scenes. The metaphor of walls of cagework that descend and separate the characters was clear enough. The absence of the Fontainebleau scene did not much undercut the grandeur of the rest, except that the melody of the love duet is a leitmotiv<\/i> that recurs three or four times during the opera, and if that duet has not been sung, it refers us to nothing. But but newcomers to the opera did not seem to feel the lack of anything except, perhaps, a second intermission. <\/span>Frankly, I was there to hear the singers, a hearty sampling of the rising generation of American Verdi-ism. Some of their acting seemed wayward, unfocused, as if the relationships were not clear to the persons enacting them or the director not really sure what to ask of the performers. Too, the gentlemen of this wealthy royal court might have worn something other than black leather now and then, especially at gaudy public rituals, and the ladies might have been more handsomely costumed and coiffed. The singing, however, was impressive.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/span>Leah Crocetto<\/b>, an admired Aida, has the warmth and weight for Verdi\u2019s powerful middle-period heroines, but she did not seem tremendously involved during the first confrontational duet with Carlo, when he is having a nervous breakdown and she is constantly aware that his father might come in. Perhaps she was saving herself for \u201cTu che le vanita,\u201d when she produced beautiful tones with thrilling power. Perhaps she had difficulty warming up because the omission of Fontainebleau with its ecstasies of young love left her no cliff top from which to glide down to regret. She needs to ponder the woman who is introduced to us in that garden, her many moods and relationships as she tries to deflect Carlo, defend the Countess, stand up to the King. <\/span>In America, just now, Jamie Barton<\/b> usually has the largest voice in the room \u2013 no surprise! \u2013 and it is a smooth, easily produced, vital, womanly sound that she produces. But I was curious about how she would act Eboli\u2019s multilayered and disloyal character. Eboli\u2019s symbol is the Veil \u2013 she is a spy, a false friend, a falsehearted lover \u2013 and, ironically, the Veil \u2013 of a nun \u2013 is just what the Queen commands her to take in their last meeting. (The libretto makes the pun, but the surtitles did not.) Barton is not a subtle actress yet but she has a confident stage presence, and confidence in this chic, brittle role will take you far. Her voice had a superb sheen for the Song of the Veil, and though its Flamenco-flavored fioriture escaped her \u2013 as it does nearly every Eboli \u2013 she handled it simply and cleanly, producing effects with triumph. \u201cO don fatale\u201d was a terrific piece of showmanship \u2013 what it was not was an uneasy, tormented mind exploring her internal contradictions, and that soliloquy is what Verdi composed. This seems to have occurred neither to Barton nor to director Albery. I\u2019d like to see Barton\u2019s take on the role a few years down the road.
\n<\/span>Russell Thomas<\/b> has been attracting admiring notice lately in such roles as Puccini\u2019s Rodolfo and Mozart\u2019s Tito. As the far more complicated Carlo, who is going mad before our eyes and ears, his singing was always attractive but rather too light and well-mannered. The ill-suppressed nuttiness of the Schiller adolescent hero in revolt against society was hardly ever present. He was perfunctory in both his love-making and his rebelliousness (the collar of his costume, which gave him a hunchback \u2013 possibly historical but no fun to sing in \u2013 did not help him), but the voice itself is of such quality that I am eager to hear it again in more suave roles like Alfredo or Riccardo. (His surtitles translated \u201cMadre\u201d as\"\"<\/a> \u201cQueen\u201d throughout the opera, as though Washington National found the stepmother-stepson relationship entirely too creepy. Creepy it is, but it\u2019s the point of the opera and the play that was its source. When Carlo reaches the point in the final scene where he can address Elisabetta as \u201cmadre,\u201d we know he has made a breakthrough and put love aside for duty. Undercutting that moment does the opera no favors). <\/span>Quinn Kelsey<\/b>, the Posa, is, quite simply, the reigning Verdi baritone of the present day, as everyone must have realized when his Count di Luna was broadcast from the Met last month. There are few roles in that fach <\/i>(from Donizetti\u2019s Enrico to Giordano\u2019s Gerard) that I would not go some distance to hear. His easy, cantante <\/i>sound soothes and warms, his diction is impressive, his breath control ideal, and when he has to get angry or desperate, the addition of power seems effortless. Rodrigo is, in many ways, the simplest of the opera\u2019s characters \u2013 he was fictitious, o history never complicates him \u2013 and his melodies are the most old-fashioned and graceful for 1867. As Kelsey sang them, they were beautifully phrased; they meant something \u2013 but so did his duets with Carlo and the King. <\/span>Eric Owens<\/b> puzzles me. Sometimes he is in total charge (as Wotan in Chicago Lyric\u2019s Walkure<\/i> last fall), sometimes out of his element (as the troubadour knight in L\u2019Amour de Loin<\/i> at the Met last year). To his rich, burly voice he adds a thoughtful presence: He always considers the text and the person he portrays, and his Wotan was carefully judged so that he remained in breath through the longest passages: He wasn\u2019t just singing to us, but to Fricka and Brunnhilde as well. His King Philip lacks the titanic force that must always be in readiness for the moments when (Verdi indicates) he commands and crushes an empire and all its peoples. He must sound <\/i>like King of Half the World (as the Grand Inquisitor \u2013 a somewhat wobbly Andrea Silvestrelli<\/b> \u2013 calls him). These moments were weak, grainy. \"\"<\/a>He did not inspire awe in Posa or Elisabetta or ourselves. But at softer moments, he was in charge: His \u201cElla giammai m\u2019amo\u201d was touching \u2013 Owens knows a soliloquy, a personal inquisition, when he encounters one, and it was pleasing to the ear as well. But he lacks imperium, and a role like this should have it. <\/span>Peter Volpe <\/b>was effective as the ghostly Friar. The Celestial Voice was, as so often, undercast: Leah Hawkins <\/b>has a large voice that cannot handle the coloratura runs that are so much of those two pages of this enormous score. <\/span>Philippe Auguin<\/b> conducted a well-controlled performance, and supported the singers during their lengthy ruminations. (They were watching him but you couldn\u2019t tell <\/i>they were watching him, if you get me.) The cello and the brasses were especially noteworthy during their highlighted moments, and the oboes and flutes made something so delectable of those reminiscences of Fontainebleau that it seemed more the pity not to have heard it.
\n<\/span>Some questions for the production team: Why is the Queen\u2019s hair in a Victorian top-knot as if she were a landlady in 1890? She\u2019s the Queen of Spain — give her a headdress or something to make her elegant in the more public scenes. Having Eboli wander through the King\u2019s Study in dishabille rather spoils the shock of her revelation, much later in the scene, that she is his mistress. And no one sits in the king\u2019s presence. Ever. Too, the Dutch envoys really should take off their hats to their king, I don\u2019t care how mad they are at him \u2013 they\u2019re asking him for a favor. Manners count! Photo\u00a0Scott Suchman<\/em><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington National Opera, The Kennedy Center, Season 2017-2018 \u201cDON CARLO\u201d Opera in four acts by Joseph Mery and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":92196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8353,13773,14094,97,1674,9354,153,6755,20090,20089,14163,6764,3562,20088,7640,20087],"class_list":["post-92195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-andrea-silvestrelli","tag-andrew-liebermann","tag-constance-hoffman","tag-don-carlo","tag-eric-owens","tag-foreign-readers","tag-giuseppe-verdi","tag-leah-crocetto","tag-leah-hawkins","tag-peter-volpe","tag-philippe-auguin","tag-quinn-kelsey","tag-russell-thomas","tag-thomas-c-hase","tag-tim-albery","tag-washington-national-opera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92198,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92195\/revisions\/92198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}