San Francisco Classical Voice

Verdi's "Don Carlo" is such a huge and intricate undertaking, the San Francisco Opera's new production would certainly bring out the best in planning by Lotfi Mansouri and Donald Runnicles. You would think. But--the very best that can be said of Zack Brown's sets and Emilio Sagi's mise en scene, viewed at the opening Saturday, is that they're different from the drearily wrought, effortful 1986 John Cox production they replace. And about the conductor, Emmanuel Joel--he's at least better than the Hanswurst who ruined "The Flying Dutchman" last year. A fine cast and some excellent and distinctive performances bailed it out, in spite of production and conductor. Talent prevails.

Cheery things and the more deserving first-- the singers. Nina Rautio (S.F.debut) is one commanding Elisabetta. The French princess, compelled to marry the aging Spanish King Philip II to cement an uneasy peace between the warring countries, became in Rautio's portrayal a queen of stature. She's not a tender, innocent victim, but a proud, brave woman ready to stand toe to toe with the raging Philip. Her conflict between love (for Carlo) and duty, and ultimately her compassion, make her the opera's noble and central figure.

Rautio has a deep, mature, rich and possessing soprano voice. With enveloping power that she does let all out, she still has the vocalism to draw out fine sudden pianissimo inflections in her magnificently rendered final prayer aria, "Tu ché la vanita." A few lunges at high notes and too much here and there seemed like miscalculations, a couple of marginal pianissimos early in the opera the effect of a dry throat.

Sergei Larin, the Russian tenor in the title role (he has sung here before in the 1992 "Tosca," 1995 "Russalka" and 1996 "Carmen") was in strong, firm voice. The initial graininess of his sound and choppy phrasing eventually smoothened out to a more Italianate lyricism, the passion in it making up for some relaxed, non-acting lapses. Also to be praised was his nobility in bearing in the farewell scene with Elisabetta. Their duet was beautiful and moving.

The big surprise was Anthony Michaels-Moore in his arresting performance as Rodrigo or (Marquis di) Posa. His dark, full baritone, a big though not altogether focused voice, dominated the stage. He matched James Morris, the Philip, in the stirring scene of Posa's brave appeal to the king. Michaels-Moore and Larin, excellently paired, made strong work of their scenes together, most impressively as Posa, assassinated by the Inquisition's monastic footpads, lay dying in Carlo's arms. The insertion of the Carlo-Philip duet earlier into that scene is a splendid and important editorial change, providing as it does the dramatically important father-son encounter and wonderful music.

The famous Carlo-Posa (Larin/M-M) duet would have been rousing had it been taken with the big sweeping pulse instead of as choppy as a march. That lies at Joel's door, as one of the consequences of his weak conducting technique. Orchestra, chorus and ensembles were grasping at straws to divine what was happening as his baton lingered at the top of the down beats. Whatever Joel feels in this music, it is not made manifest in a continual, flowing urging of pulse and phrase. No line.

Occasionally, principals, like Larin in Act I, would sing standing face front to read the conducting for sure. Morris took over the conducting duties for himself in Act IV, the King's study scene. The trouble with that was not the ensuing tempo war itself but the slowness of the bass's tempo, which spoiled the great monolog "Ella giammai m'amo," losing the musical line and sympathy for the disconsolate king. With Morris still dragging, the later quartet also lost its energy.

Morris was a powerful figure as expected, but didn't show the other sides of Philip as some kind of human, with the vulnerability that makes him interesting. His voice showed the effects of wear. Victor van Halem, the bass who is also portraying King Mark in the current "Tristan und Isolde," was a spine-chilling malevolence as the grand Inquisitor, his voice deep and black as the tomb.

The anomaly in the cast was the Greek-born mezzo soprano Markella Hatziano as Princess Eboli. Her voice, cracking and breaking between the registers, sounded as if she had long since blown it out. The insecurity of her technique was demonstrated in the failure of her "Song of the Veil." The explosive emotion of her second and final aria, "O don fatale!" and its jolting dramatic effect indicated that "full out" is what she does and why she was engaged. But that's only a fractional part of a complex and interesting role.

The comprimario singers were effective -Reinhard Hagen (the monk), Matthew Lord, Norman Shankle, Tammy Jenkins--with the exception of Cassandre Berthon, a tiny soubrette with a pea-shooter voice, as the page Tebaldo. (I thought it was someone from our youth choruses until I read the program and marveled that she should have been imported from France for this, her U.S. debut!).

The production used the Italian version of 1886, Verdi's late revision in five acts (taken in three). The first of these is the usually omitted but important act set in Fontainebleau where Carlo, on a secret visit to France, sees the princess promised as his betrothed. They fall in love only to learn immediately that the King of France has instead given her hand to Carlo's father, Philip.

The producer, Sagi, has changed the opera's ending (as some others have done) so that Carlo is seized by the King's soldiers for imminent execution, instead of Verdi's solution --having the supposed ghost of grandfather Carlo V sweep his grandson off into holy sanctuary. "Historical" or even dramatic plausibility has no bearing on such a change. It's more a director's assertion of independence than something interpretively important. Verdi freely acknowledged the fictional nature of the entire libretto to explain the fact that he himself didn't "mind the appearance of the old Emperor."

Producers like Sagi however, try to make the historical context so seriously a basis for their settings of operatic fictions that they do things that are either counter-productive or just don't work. The real Princess Eboli, aka Ana Mendoza de la Cerda, wore an eye patch because, scholars speculate, she was wall-eyed. Here as is sometimes done as a touch, she wears the patch, irrelevant to Verdi of course. Taking this device a further step and believing a story that Ana Mendoza lost her eye in a swordplay rehearsal, Sagi has our Eboli seize Carlo's sword to hold the threatening Posa at bay. The audience laughs. It doesn't work. Many of Sagi's ideas don't because they are intellectually contrived. He lacks dramatic imagination, which for a director is about it.

Black is the dominant color of the sets, reflected in the black mirror-finish floor for every scene, gardens, study, cathedral square, prison, wherever. Sagi doesn't grasp the idea that the real horror of terrible and monstrous events is most sharply shown in the clarity of "normal" light and life, real humans behaving inhumanly.

Fiery red silk curtains to one side symbolize the flames of the auto-da-fe, and against them we see a contrived business of the victims' bodies being hoisted up as their "spirits rise to heaven." Sent skyward with them are puppets that have been burned in lieu of the heretics who had fled the country, we were told--but of course everyone knew what these effigies meant in Inquisition times and weren't the least bit puzzled.

Each scene or act is first veiled by a black scrim emblazoned in gold with Philip's heraldic emblem. Often, before it travels off to the right or left, lighting comes up in back to provide an advance peek at a key personage or element in that scene--a modestly inventive way of carrying us through the scene changes. In the misfiring Fontainebleau set, the actions take place around what looks like a catafalque (a scale model of a city, I later learned) and that resembled the tomb we see behind a towering black steel grillwork in the succeeding, monastery scene. Apparently, this was Sagi's secret way of suggesting that Fontainebleau was Carlo's dream. Doesn't work.

Romantic scenic projections in the garden scenes looked like projections. A bridge high across the back of the stage accommodated accessory activity -- parading, gawking, eavesdropping and the like. But none of this formed an conceptual and aesthetic unity. Doesn't work.

After the long performance, the audience remained while Lotfi Mansouri awarded the S.F. Opera Medal to Irene Dalis in celebration of her great service to the company and opera generally. It was the fortieth anniversary of her debut here in the role, appropriately enough, of Princess Eboli in "Don Carlo." This great performer, characteristically, gave an eloquent response to the tribute.

(Robert Commanday, the editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)

©1998 Robert Commanday, all rights reserved