I love it when the professional hand is in evidence. I love it when the commitment to quality is absolute. I love it when there is a commitment to community riding alongside the commitment to the arts. Maryland Lyric Opera gets high marks on all of these, and all three were on full display Friday night in MDLO’s showpiece production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo (1867) in concert. MDLO’s partially staged performance included a seventy-one piece orchestra, a twenty piece Banda, and a seventy-four member chorus, six lead soloists and eight contributing singers. This was concert opera at its fullest and then some.
Any report on a performance of Don Carlo has a lot to unpack, beginning with the question of why it is sometimes called Don Carlos. What difference does an s make? Verdi and his librettists Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle originally wrote a grand, five-act opera in French for Paris titled Don Carlos (including a ballet not often performed today). It didn’t fare all that well, and Verdi produced several revisions, the most important and most often performed is the one for his homeland, a four-act version with the libretto translated into Italian, called Don Carlo. The Metropolitan Opera recently performed Don Carlos, its first ever production of the original in French. Many musicologists, though not all, view the opera as Verdi’s finest. Some consider it flawed in construction despite its important and still relevant themes, but all yield to the greatness of its music. Don Carlo is frequently performed in Europe, though not so often in the US for reasons I’ll get to later.
Mark Delevan as Rodrigo and Arturo Chacón-Cruz as Carlo. Photo by Julian Thomas; courtesy of Maryland Opera.
Don Carlo is a historical drama (loosely based on real people and events) that takes place in sixteenth century Spain under the rule of King Philip II and the Spanish Inquisition. It is based on a Schiller play which itself had a forerunner in a French romance by Abbé de Saint-Réal whose plot was based on a rumor, not substantiated, that the real Don Carlos, heir to Philip’s throne was secretly in love with his stepmother; it’s complicated, follow me here. While we think of Verdi as primarily concerned with affairs of the heart, he also became a political activist, deeply concerned with governance, conflicts between kingdoms/nations, matters of church and state, and their impact on the individual.
The opera’s plot in a nutshell: A monk seeming to be the deceased previous ruler, Charles V, offers foreboding words for Carlo who has just returned from Flanders where there is an uprising, a trip made against the wishes of his father, the King. Arrangements had been made for Prince Carlo of Spain to marry Princess Elisabetta of France to seal the peace between warring France and Spain. Subsequently, the two met and fell in love. In the interim, King Philip decided it was better for him to marry her instead. Jilted by his father, Carlo is distraught and still drawn to Elisabetta. She accepts the new situation as their fate and reluctantly rebuffs Carlo. Court Princess Eboli has designs on Carlo but then seeks revenge on him when she discovers his love of Elisabetta; she plants evidence of his attachment to the Queen for the King to find. Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa, befriends Carlo; both have a commitment to helping citizens of Flanders, repressed in rule by Philip. Philip takes Rodrigo as a confidant to also spy on Carlo and Elizabeth whom he suspects are adulterous. The King asks the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition how to deal with Carlo’s rebellion and is told Carlo’s death is warranted and so is Rodrigo’s for abetting the insurrection in Flanders. The King mourns his wife’s lack of love for him and on discovering the evidence planted by Eboli accuses her of an affair with Carlo. Eboli and the King come to realize Elisabetta is innocent. Eboli confesses to Elisabetta that she gave evidence of her affection for Carlo to the King and that she was the King’s mistress; Elisabetta banishes her to exile. Rodrigo is shot by the King’s men. Carlo vows to continue the fight for Flanders, and after a brief reunion with Elisabetta, is almost captured by the King’s men, but is led into a tomb by the ghost of his granddad, Charles V in an ending so ambiguous that it has caused many a stage director to alter it; MDLO stayed true to Verdi. As you can see, this plot requires an oversized nutshell. I think that’s a problem, more later.
Elaine Alvarez as Elisabetta. Photo by Julian Thomas; courtesy of Maryland Opera.
Let’s give Verdi and the MDLO Orchestra (seventy-one members with a twenty-member Banda) their due. Verdi’s music in Don Carlo, like all Verdi music is mood setting, drama enhancing and melodious, but this one seemed very different to me, far different from the music I just heard in attending Rigoletto recently. It seemed more refined and more varied. I thought I heard a middle eastern influence at times, marches, different choices of solo instruments, other influences; some of it even sounded French. Conductor Louis Salemno, leading a massive orchestra and chorus, gave Verdi’s music full measure, beautiful, sometimes drawing you in and sometimes pressing you back in your seat. It was a marvelous experience.
Andrea Silvestrelli as King Philip. Photo by Julian Thomas; courtesy of Maryland Opera.
Verdi’s Don Carlo requires six strong soloists for the roles of Carlo, Elisabetta, Philip, Rodrigo, Eboli, and Grand Inquisitor. MDLO’s six main soloists were stellar and buoyed by eight excellent supporting singers; all were excellent in singing and acting. International star tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz was a convincing Carlo whose burnished tenor was impressive in solos and duets. One of the most impressive duets came early in the opera as Carlo and Rodrigo sealed their friendship, blending their voices in a beautiful manner, reminiscent of the tenor baritone-duet in The Pearl Fishers. Baritone Mark Delavan, an MDLO regular, gave one of his finest performances as Rodrigo. Soprano Elaine Alvarez sang beautifully as Elisabetta. Her voice has a rare endearing quality, so effective at conveying the emotions of the troubled Queen. Mezzo-soprano Catherine Martin provided perhaps the only light-hearted moment of the opera with her Act I aria about mistaken identities, which was a delight. She further impressed with a beautiful and emotionally searing aria in Act III expressing her shame and regret over her actions. Bass Andrea Silvestrelli who played King Philip II is often described as “one of the most sought-after 'bassi profondi' on the international opera scene”. It is hard to envision a more perfect King Philip. With that voice and royal manner, he commands every scene, while still conveying his insecurities about his power and his love life. Bass Kenneth Kellogg made a fearsome, implacable blind Grand Inquisitor; his voice in fine form used to chilling effect.
The excellent cast in smaller roles contributed substantially to the effectiveness of the performance, including the marvelous soprano Nayoung Ban, who portrayed Tebaldo and the Celestial Voice, and smooth, steady baritone SeungHyeon Baek who sang the roles of Frate and a Flemish Deputy; both are former members of the MDLO Young Artists institute. Other contributors were Mauricio Miranda, Hunter Enoch, Javier Arrey, Jose Sacin, Adam Cioffani, and Annie Gill. The seventy-four member MDLO Chorus singing beautifully were placed in a balcony semi-circle at the back of the stage with men and women members evenly dispersed. The chorus is a major contributor to the performance in Don Carlo, and this chorus fulfilled that role extremely well. One complicating factor for all the singers was the size and volume of the orchestra, which seemed to force singers occasionally to labor extra hard to match the volume of the orchestra’s sound.
Catherine Martin as Princess Eboli (left) and Nayoung Ban as Tebaldo. Photo by Julian Thomas; courtesy of Maryland Opera.
Although this was a concert version of Don Carlo, it was semi-staged with only a few props, featuring singer-actor interactions, but no costumes or sets. Visual Supervisor Dave Gately’s limited staging was well done, enhancing the drama. Lighting changes were used effectively to enhance the mood of several of the scenes; kudos to Lighting Designer Stuart Duke. The English supertitles (the opera was sung in Italian) were displayed on a large zig zag screen about the chorus. A series of paintings to complement the setting were also displayed on the screen, a clever and effective innovation for this production; kudos to Projection Designer Sarah Tundermann. [Addendum 5/17/22 - I asked for additional information on the paintings that were used and received these interesting comments from Ms. Tundermann: "David Gately was inspired by El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos), so many of the paintings are either by him, or are stylistically similar. In some cases I projected one of his works, sometimes moving through pans and tilts before landing on the framing we would sit in for the scene. In other cases, a single painting didn't work with the screen shape, or I was looking for something to match the mood and/or location of the scene better, so I visually compiled multiple paintings into a single image. This was the case for the first scene in which I combined Saint Francis Kneeling in Meditation with the city-scape background of The Feast in the House of Simon, both by El Greco. Other works by El Greco that were included in the projections were View of Toledo, Christ Healing the Blind, Apparition of the Virgin and Child to Saint Hyacinth, The Disrobing of Christ, The Vision of Saint John, Laocoon, and The View and Plan of Toledo. The act one finale - the Auto-da-fé - included works by Eugenio Lucas Velázquez and Francisco de Goya."
Kenneth Kellogg as the Grand Inquisitor (center) confronting King Philip. Photo by Julian Thomas; courtesy of Maryland Opera.
My previous experience of Don Carlo was Washington National Opera’s production of 2018 which used a dark and foreboding staging throughout, with an emphasis on oppressive governance and church issues. MDLO’s performance emphasized more the force of the attachment between Carlo and Elisabetta, even without a first act in the Paris version that establishes their love for each other. I preferred this emphasis. One disadvantage of the concert version is a lessened impact of the scene, though not the music, for the auto da fé scene, a celebration where heretics are burned alive, as sentenced by the Inquisition. This is a more chilling scene in staged versions, “as a voice from the heavens sings of their salvation”. The course of the ending is also more difficult to convey in a concert version. MDLO’s semi-staged version did convey the important themes of the opera and provided a compelling, entertaining drama. It also left me wanting to see the opera again; it has so many nuances to the story.
Often the reason given for Don Carlo not being produced more often in the U.S. is the cost of staging it with six extraordinary singers demanded for an effective presentation. Opera is government subsidized in Europe and Don Carlo gets substantially more play there. I wonder, however, if part of the issue in the U.S. is that we don’t have a history of living under kings and royalty. We are not so readily drawn into this opera; its basis has not been drilled into our bones. An opera about George Washington or Thomas Jefferson would have immediate appeal here, maybe even one about Hamilton. Verdi’s La Traviata, about a good girl in a bad situation, is enormously popular in the U.S.; our hearts quickly go out to Violetta. Don Carlo also covers a lot of territory even in a three-hour opera. I believe Americans need more time and character development to be drawn deeper into its several stories, perhaps better as a mini-series; with the ambiguous ending, it seems ripe for a season two. Despite its sophistication, Don Carlo will likely remain an opera whose main appeal is for opera aficionados. Regardless, its themes remain relevant in our turbulent times, and MDLO certainly showed us that its music deserves to be heard more often.
With Don Carlo, MDLO wraps up a COVID-limited season of two excellent productions, both concert versions, after a two-year hiatus caused by the pandemic. MDLO, during that period ,showed its strong commitment to their community by using their resources early on to obtain and distribute face masks, in short supply at the time, to first responders and health care workers. We are all beneficiaries of their ability to bring world class opera performances to the Maryland suburbs.
Fan Experience: Maryland Lyric Opera held performances of Don Carlo on May 13 and 15 at the Music Center at Strathmore. The concert hall is a beautiful structure that has outstanding acoustics for concert performances. Strathmore is conveniently located close to the Grosvenor Metro Stop on the Rockville Pike. Use of the parking deck is free on evenings and weekends. I have found parking there to be easy in and easy out.
For anyone not familiar with Don Carlo, I strongly recommend reading the synopsis ahead of time, at least the first two acts. As I have described, it is a very complicated plot.