SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Presenting Verdi’s Don Carlo in a 410-seat theater poses, to say the least of it, some problems. If not quite on the scale of Aida, Don Carlo is an opera that combines searing personal conflicts with passages on the grandest scale.

 

Bellevue Opera is a locally based company of inevitably limited resources but keen artistic ambition, so I prefer to regard its choice of repertoire on this occasion as brave rather than foolhardy, and the result was in many ways highly enjoyable. The opera was given in what was essentially the four-act Milan version, with some cuts–but then, Verdi and his librettists made so many changes over the years that the notion of a “definitive” version of Don Carlo is as chimerical as the idea of an authentically complete Handel Messiah. The grandeur was dealt with by simply leaving it out. Nothing like an auto–da-fé was seen. Instead of eight deputies from Flanders, there was just one. And a reference to the “pomp and splendor” of kingship seemed a bit excessive, since the splendor was limited to an inconspicuous crown and the colored sash that King Filippo wore with his natty but not at all regal tail coat.

 

Most, however, of the personal elements were retained, and they made a strong impact with the help of an excellent cast of solo singers, backed up by highly competent orchestral and choral work expertly paced by conductor Jonathan Pasternack. The outstanding vocal work came from Beth Madsen Bradford’s vibrant-toned Princess Eboli, Jeaneanne Houston’s sympathetic Elisabetta, and a really impressive line-up of lower male voices, including that of baritone Benjamin Harris. who doubled as the monk (alias Charles V) and as the Flemish deputy. In the bass roles of Filippo and the Grand Inquisitor, and especially in their long and intense duet and in Filippo’s heart-rending “Ella giammai m’amò,” Jonathan Silvia and Michael Drumheller revealed well-focused and admirably resonant voices, and baritone Glenn Guhr’s Rodrigo was equally fine except in the somewhat weaker top of the range. “Weaker” would not be the right description for Stuart Lutzenhiser's top register: as Don Carlo, he delivered himself, with more courage than discretion, of some high notes that recalled George Bernard Shaw’s characterization of the 19th-century tenor Tamberlik’s famous chest-voice top C as “an eldritch screech which might just as well have been aimed an octave higher.” But in less stratospheric regions Stuart Lutzenhiser’s voice was admirably warm and solid, and he made something truly affecting out of his ravishing final duet with Elisabetta.

 

Musical matters, then, were handled by and large with considerable artistry and skill. I wish I could say the same for the staging. Here again there was, indeed, much to enjoy. Given the scale of the theater, the set was suitably simple and effective, and the use of projections on the backdrop nicely evoked the salient characteristics of each scene (though I thought it odd for a designer in the “Evergreen State,” faced with a reference to pine trees, to come up with a decidedly deciduous if handsome array of vegetation). The principals, too, all acted with conviction and force, even if the old-fashioned tendency to “stand and deliver” directly at the audience instead of facing the person being addressed might have been avoided by some minor adjustments. Guhr was made up to look distinctly too old for a young spark like Rodrigo, and surely even a delegate from far-off Flanders would have known that the way to coax a favor out of the king is not by keeping your hat on in his presence and then singing your heart out, however caressingly, with your back turned to him. But it was the updating of the action, perhaps occasioned initially by budgetary constraints in the matter of costuming, that most seriously damaged the drama.

 

Don Carlo is an opera that, in dramatic terms, cannot survive being taken far out of its historical setting, in this case 16th-century Spain. I hate to break the news to director James L. Brown, but the Inquisition has not been a going concern for quite a while now. The whole point of the story, so far as public matters are concerned, is the conflict of church and state, along with that conflict’s consequences for individual human beings. The sight of a bunch of citizens, garbed in a variety of present-day outfits, merrily snapping flash pictures of each other, and then sinking obediently to their knees before the king in obedience to the Inquisitor, was merely laughable. And Don Carlo is not a comedy.

 

If supertitles, by the way, are to inform the audience accurately of what is going on, they need to be more alive to plot nuances than these were. Quite apart from perpetrating at one point that dismally familiar grammatical howler, “between you and I,” the titles were often out of synch with the sung text. In the scene, moreover, where Eboli begs Elisabetta’s forgiveness, the two crucial words were missing; it is those words alone that explain the queen’s sudden shift from warm sympathy to frosty condemnation–it is not just Eboli’s admission of adultery that horrifies the queen, but that it is an admission of adultery with the King.

 

No high marks, then, for dramatic verisimilitude. But, all things considered, the relatively rare opportunity to see my favorite Verdi opera live on stage left me much more pleased and satisfied than the reverse. Maestro Pasternack deserves a great deal of the credit, and I look forward to witnessing more of his work in the future.

 

Bernard Jacobson