Verdi,  Don Carlos: (Production from the Vienna State Opera) Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the Gran Teatro del Liceu, Maurizio Benini (conductor); Location, Barcelona, Spain.  29.01.2007 (MM)

 

 

The Gran Teatro del Liceu rolled out Verdi's Don Carlos, the whole nine yards and then some, January 27 - February 14.  This is the original Don Carlos created for the Paris Opéra in 1867, not the later Don Carlo, a truncated version in Italian that Verdi put together for La Scala in 1884.  This means that in Barcelona it was sung in French, its five acts and ballet exceeding five hours in length.

 

The Peter Konwitschny production made its way to the Liceu from Vienna, though it was originally staged in Hamburg.  Scandal and controversy have accompanied this production from the beginning, though seen now in Barcelona perhaps this controversy can be directed away from the extreme ballet and auto-da-fé to the radical shift effected by Konwitschny in the Phillip monologue.

 

The Fontainebleau act, the first one, the one Verdi dispensed with in his La Scala version, is in a black void, inhabited by cold, shivering men, women and children.  The crowd dispersed, Don Carlos and Elisabeth make their chance encounter, and ignite their passions for one another.  And here too Elisabeth's acquiesces to marry Don Carlos' father, Phillip II of Spain.

 

The Spanish court descends, a huge, heavy box made of thick, plain white walls, its entire lower perimeter is a series of low doors forcing the king and queen themselves and members of the court, all encumbered by heavy, black Spanish court dress, to stoop when entering.  There are only two additional visual images, most prominent was the black prompter's box where it always is, downstage center.  It is at once Carlo V's tomb, a bench or whatever, and of course the prompter's box.  An old monk, the voice of Carlo V, adds the second image by planting a tree seedling next to the prompter's box, admonishing Don Carlos on the futility of ambition.  It is in this decorated space that Konwitschny shapes and destroys the five personages that are perhaps Verdi's most deeply felt characters. 

 

Konwitschny gives his opera singers ritualized, abstracted motions that quickly and strongly indicate what is happening to them.  Don Carlos is entrapped in love simply by turning himself around, Don Carlos and Elisabeth, side by side, rhythmically thrust twigs into a stove as their passion grows, Don Carlos and the Marquis de Posa cement their vow of friendship with thrusting clenched fists, Rodrigue, driven against a wall by Phillip's boasts of power, erupts in laughter, Phillip crumbles at his feet.  These motions spellbound, literally and physically, the Liceu stage and audience. 

 

These scenes meld into the third act.  Elisabeth entrusts Eboli with her veil, Eboli, enlightened about where Don Carlos' passions lie, screams revenge.  But just at this moment it is time for the Queen's ballet.

 

Ballet and spectacle were one and the same with opera in Louis XIV's France, and this model persevered for two hundred or so years, well, until it has gotten too expensive for such extravagances except on very special occasions.  Konwitschny must have thought that it is pretty silly to interrupt Schiller's perfectly intense story with these divertissements, but sportingly he led his show on.  Out went the enormous white box of the Spanish court, in came Eboli and Don Carlos' tacky 1970's apartment, the boss and wife (that's Phillip II and Elisabeth) invited over for dinner.  The roasting chicken, forgotten, burns to a crisp, a desperate telephone call summons a pizza delivery man (the Marquis de Posa).  Not a cent spent on ballerinas.

 

 

Thoroughly stunned we stumbled into intermission, grabbed coupes of champagne and expressed our wonderment.  Soon TV monitors lighted up with an excited newsperson, on location, direct from the Liceu, inviting us to an auto-da-fé (burning of the heretics) that we could watch on the monitors or see on the stage.  Trumpets lined up here and there in the Liceu's public areas and the music began, bloodied heretics were driven through the foyers.  The TV monitors showed the orchestra playing in the pit, the stage filled with choristers dressed like the audience, coupes of champagne in hand, cheering the arrival of the heretics onto stage.  The king and queen arrived at the Liceu's grand Rambla entrance, and surrounded by bodyguard thugs made their way down the main aisle of the fully lighted auditorium, partially filled with a cheering audience, the rest glued to monitors in the foyers.  On stage the king was humbly addressed by the Flemish ambassadors, implored by the crowd, and then rashly admonished by the rabble-rouser Don Carlos.  Leaflets depicting a bombed-out opera house dropped into every corner of the theater. 

 

We were two thousand supernumeraries in this scene of unprecedented theatrical audacity and operatic magnitude.  We cost the Liceu not one cent and even paid for our own champagne.

 

 

Back at the oppressive Spanish court Phillip is found in his study, the enormous white box having descended, where he will deliver the greatest bass scene in all of opera, his ten-minute confession of loneliness.  Shockingly he is not alone -- a woman lies beside him as he begins his lament elle ne m'aime pas.  The woman sharing his bed is recognized only after we have summoned our most profound feelings of sympathy for this suffering king.  It is not the queen, but Eboli!  We feel Phillip's agony as never before, and share the degradation he feels for himself and for his court.  If there is scandal and controversy in Konwitschny's production it should be addressed here as this scene, a (perhaps the) Verdi masterpiece, is at once immeasurably enriched and utterly destroyed by depriving its protagonist of his intended dignity.

 

The production's miscalculation was not to re-focus our attention on the stage after the exhilaration of the ballet and the auto-da-fé.  The white box became tiresome, Spanish court dress meant nothing.  Without a renewed theatrical language and its resultant stimulation the most powerful of Verdi's Don Carlos music lost the forceful edge brought to the score in the first part of the evening.

 

Make no mistake, this was opera at its absolute level.  The conductor, Maurizio Benini, gave a sympathetic reading of the score that was one with the production conception and the needs of the singers.  The cast, led by Franco Farina in a flawless vocal and histrionic delivery of the fragile Don Carlos, included the physically and vocally powerful Giacomo Prestia as Phillip II, and an enigmatic and dangerous, vocally splendid Carlos Alvarez as Rodrigue.  Neither the Elisabeth of Adrienne Pieczonka nor the Eboli of Sonia Ganassi matched the elegance of the males, adding an earthiness that was perhaps partially a directorial choice.  Both are excellent Verdi interpreters and gave powerful performances.  Eric Halfvarson was the Grand Inquisitor, casting one expects in any high level production.  The ballet disproved the notion that opera singers are not actors.  This cast could hold its own on any TV soap opera.

 

 

Michael Milenski

 

  

Pictures ©  Antoni Bofill, Gran Teatro del Liceu

 

 

Michael Milenski's web site is Here