Don Carlo

Lincoln Center, New York

(212) 362-6000

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It’s not hard to see why, after a three-decade absence, Don Carlo “earned an enthusiastic ovation” upon its return to the Met last week, said Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times. Staging Verdi’s tragic story of “powerful people made pawns” in Inquisition-era Spain is a major undertaking. Because of this, and perhaps because more daring recent Met productions have been greeted by jeers, director Nicholas Hytner’s approach is strikingly traditional. This version is “basically Verdi’s final 1886 revision” of the drama, in which Carlo, crown prince of Spain, forfeits his love for Elisabeth of Valois so that his father can marry her to seal a peace treaty. Wisely, Hytner lets Verdi’s “profound and challenging work” speak for itself.

Yet Hytner’s smart work will delight anyone who thinks of him as a Broadway director only, said Robert Hofler in Variety. His choice to stage all five acts of Don Carlo proves worthwhile, as the often-excised “love-at-first-sight” meeting of Carlo and Elisabeth makes the romance’s tragic consequences all the more compelling. The opera’s grandeur is also aided by Bob Crowley’s “visually unique” sets, which manage to feel stylistically seamless even while evoking both the magic of a royal winter retreat and the menace of a grand Inquisition trial. The scene changes are often accompanied by the silent procession of monks and corpse-bearing soldiers, a “masterful” strategy that pulls the story and our attention forward.

“But the demands of opera are quite unlike those of unsung drama,” and this production doesn’t always meet them, said Martin Bernheimer in the Financial Times. Many of the principals, including Roberto Alagna as a “bellowing” Carlo, lack the “dynamic restraint” that is needed to highlight the contrasts in the score. There are two stark exceptions to that rule: As King Philip, basso profundo Ferruccio Furlanetto often “dominates” the proceedings; and Russian soprano Marina Poplavskaya, in a heart-rending portrayal of Elisabeth, “shades Verdi’s arching lines with beguiling finesse.” If only the others would forsake their “breathless propulsion and high decibels,” this production would be as much of a masterpiece as Verdi’s work itself.