Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
✭✭✭✩✩
by Giuseppe Verdi. Directed by John Caird
Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
October 12-28, 2007
The COC’s current production of Verdi’s Don Carlos marks the first time the company has presented the opera in its original five-act French version. This is a grand opera in more ways than one. Though the production excludes the ballet, it still lasts about 4 1/2 hours. The subject matter based on Friedrich Schiller’s play of the same name examines the intertwining of personal and historical events at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The music finds Verdi at the height of his powers. Such a rarity with the right cast and director could be opera-lovers’ heaven. Sadly, the present production lacks both.
The story is rife with tension. Don Carlos (Mikhail Agafonov), heir to the Spanish throne, is engaged to Elizabeth de Valois (Adrianne Pieczonka). However, in order to make peace between France and Spain, Elizabeth’s father, the king of France, marries her instead to Carlos’s father, Philip II (Terje Stensvold). At the same time Rodrigue (Scott Hendricks), who loves Carlos, wants him to support the rebellion of Flanders against Spanish rule. Thus, there is no action any character can take to achieve happiness that will not run afoul of civil or religious law.
John Caird, who directed the production of Les Misérables that made it a worldwide success, might be thought the ideal director for this story. Surprisingly, his work here is just like the old stodge we’ve happily grown unaccustomed to from the COC. He marshals the chorus about in mind-numbingly identical series of processions and lets the singers fall back on the old stand-front-and-centre-and-sing technique. The famous auto-da-fé scene should be terrifying, but here the condemned men look as if they’re being smoked like hams rather than burnt alive.
This might not be so bad if the singers were all natural actors, but with two notable exceptions all of them need help. The expressionless Agafonov has a voice with only two settings--loud and louder. Subtleties of phrasing and intonation are lost on him. Stensvold’s voice loses tone in its lowest notes and at no time has regal presence. Grand Inquisitor Ayk Martirossian’s French diction is incomprehensible. Guang Yang as the Princess Eboli, also in love with Carlos, has a powerful voice but a small repertoire of gestures. The superb performances of Pieczonka and Hendricks raise the level of the whole evening. Only when they are on stage does the work come alive. Only in the nuances of their singing and acting do we feel the conflict between desire and constraint that the opera is all about.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-10-15.
Photo: The auto-da-fé, Act III, Scene 2. ©Douglas Brown.
2007-10-15
Don Carlos