Back to the serious stuff for Opera North, after recent forays into lighter works. Here is text book Verdi, the emotional and dramatic essence of Don Carlos in a thoroughly apt staging.
Scenes open with a square cut into a white screen to allow a first view of a main character. Then the full set is revealed. Hildegard Bechtler’s simple but telling design has towering walls and the lighting allows for emphatic shadows. The atmosphere in this clandestine world is oppressive, furtive, anything but sombre. Entrances and exits have strong visual impact, the burning of heretics is a nightmarish pageant, but the stage does look too severely raked for comfort.
Don Carlos loves Elisabeth. Once they were promised in marriage but now she is wed to his father, King Phillip II of Spain. Not a healthy situation, especially in a royal family. Julian Gavin is the agonising son, singing with perfectly expressed heartache.
Jane Dutton, making her Opera North debut, excels as scheming Princess Eboli. Her aria in the fourth act is a soaring belter. Each word is purely sung. More of Ms Dutton, please.
Both Clive Bayley, as the Grand Inquisitor, and Robert Winslade Anderson as the Monk sing with commendable power. The latter’s contribution being quite striking.
Andrew Porter’s balanced and well toned translation enables the singing to seem almost as natural as talking. This Don Carlos really is quite something.
Next month Opera North will be making a recording of Don Carlos in Leeds Town Hall. Time to find those gift tokens.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
Content is copyright © 2012 The Stage Media Company Limited unless otherwise stated.
All RSS feeds are published for personal, non-commercial use. (What’s RSS?)
