|
|
|
|
The Times, 5 May 2013 |
Hillary Finch |
|
Verdi: Don Carlo, Royal Opera House London, 4. Mai 2013 |
|
Don Carlo at Covent Garden *****
|
Photo: Donald Cooper |
With
its icy, bare pine forest, its cavernous cloister, its moonlit avenue of
poplars, its massive golden cathedral, Nicholas Hytner’s 2008 production of
Don Carlo is back in its second revival. In Bob Crowley’s outstanding sets,
it looks as good as new. And with Antonio Pappano in the pit, the notes
sound as though they are flowing live from Verdi’s pen.
At once epic
and intimate, this production incarnates every ambiguity, every conflict,
every contradiction of human existence that makes this opera so truly great.
Desolate spaces, haunted by a solo clarinet or cello, or a single,
unaccompanied voice collide with massed and menacing crowds, converging
towards the footlights. Verdi’s dark instrumental nights of the soul are
suddenly confronted by his full panoply of raging, resonant orchestral
colour.
While Pappano makes us hear all of this in his
wonderfully instinctive continuum of dramatic direction, Hytner’s staging,
sensitively revived by Paul Higgins, makes us feel those inner and outer
conflicts in the tiniest detail. Watch the hands: fingers splayed in terror,
tensed in fear; hands trembling, reassuring; hands touching and, with a long
ache of distance, failing to touch.
Those who return to the cast have
assimilated this body language to a degree which holds a full house
spellbound. And those new to the production are drawn deep in. Jonas
Kaufmann returns to the title role, in superb voice and half-voice, his
responses ardent and puppy-ish, his body tense and twitching with nervous
energy. His friendship with the Posa of Mariusz Kwiecien, making his role
debut with the Royal Opera, seems to have been for ever. Kwiecien’s
long lines of melody, his pacing, his sense of long-breathed time, as well
as of fatal urgency, make the silence during their duets total, the applause
after them deafening.
Anja Harteros sings the role of Elizabeth of
Valois for the first time with the Royal Opera. And you feel, for the
duration, that you never want to hear anyone else in the part. She’s tall,
slender and noble of bearing; her eyes and her ripe, indefatigable soprano
express a resolution and a tragic resignation nuanced by countless tints of
sadness.
The French mezzo, Béatrice Uria-Monzon, replacing the
originally billed but indisposed Christine Rice, makes her house debut as a
fiery, volatile Eboli. Eric Halfvarson returns as a gross, slobbering, moral
wreck of a Grand Inquisitor. And Philip II, unchanged, unchanging, is again
superbly sung by Ferruccio Furlanetto: his double act with Pappano’s pacing
and accompanying is one of the most moving and thought-provoking aspects of
the unforgettable evening.
|
|
|
|
|
|