Above: tombs of the Spanish kings, at El Escorial
Wednesday April 15th, 2015 - A chance to hear some 'new' voices took me to The Met tonight for a performance of DON CARLO. I was pretty certain I would not be staying until the end, unless the debuting soprano Lianna Haroutunian turned out to be a revelation, so I took a score desk. The House was shockingly empty...so many unsold seats.
The performance highlighted the problems with The Met's currrent cover system as well as the lack of 'bench' that the opera world is experiencing in general. Tonight's Don Carlo was to have been the 'cover', Brazilian tenor Ricardo Tamura in his Met debut. But on the prior Saturday, Yonghoon Lee (who is first-cast this season) was ill and Mr. Tamura, though apparently also ill, was pressed into service. Tamura by all reports did not fare well, and so it came as no surprise that The Met asked Mr. Lee to sing tonight. An announcement was made pre-curtain that Mr. Lee was not fully recovered and our indulgence was asked; Lee started impressively but as the evening progressed he showed signs of increasing vocal discomfort; I left after Act II but heard later that indeed Lee surrendered after Act III and was replaced by...Tamura, who reportedly was sounding better than he had on Saturday. (Did no one think of asking Luc Robert, who sang a very good Ernani for his Met debut a few days ago, and who sings Carlo, to take over?)
For me, the Fontainebleau scene is expendable; it's nice to have it included on recordings, but in the theatre it makes for a very long night and adds little to the overall impact of this opera in which the greatest music comes in the later scenes. We survived for years with the four-act version; adding Fontainebleau, and with two Gelb-intermissions, a Met performance of DON CARLO takes on Wagnerian proportions these days.
In the Fontainebleau scene we meet Carlo first, and Yonghoon Lee sounded very fine here: his voice is clear, sizable, Italianate. He showed off some very nice piano effects and his singing in the duet with Elisabetta was persuasively passionate and full of tenderness. In her Met debut, the Armenian soprano Lianna Haroutunian seemed at first slightly under-sized vocally for the Big House; her timbre is attractive and her lyric instincts are spot-on, though she tended to veer sharp on upper notes. Amanda Woodbury sang appealingly as Tebaldo.
The Fontainebleau scene tonight felt more than ever like marking time, and indeed when the Met horns (having an excellent night) intoned the sombre, deep-purple chorale that opens the St. Just scene one felt that DON CARLO had truly started. And here the conducting of Yannick Nézet-Séguin began to manifest the maestro's vision of the opera: in the grandeur of the St. Just prelude and later in the lilting introduction to the Garden Scene and in his vivid feel for the drama of the Posa-Philip duet, the conductor showed himself at his finest. Momentary partings of the way between pit and stage with Ms. Harountunian and Luca Salsi (Posa) were signs of probable lack of rehearsal with second-cast singers.
Robert Pomakov as the Friar sounded rather tremulous and lacked the desired plushy-dark lowest notes that can make his utterances so profound. In the scene where Carlo reveals his secret love for Elisabetta to Posa - and where tenor and baritone swear eternal friendship - Mr. Lee began to sound a bit cautious: he was clearly husbanding the voice and was successful to a point. Mr. Salsi has a reliable, somewhat generic 'Italian baritone' sound and impressive top notes, though his singing lacks elegance.
Bulgarian mezzo Nadia Krasteva (debut) displayed a voice more appealing in the lower than in the higher range. Her chest-resonant notes had a dusky allure but the higher reaches of the voice seemed to lose tonal focus. By lightening the tone, she managed all the Veil Song's melismatic passages with success. Mssr. Nézet-Séguin kept the underlying tensions of the trio for Elisabetta, Eboli and Posa well in focus.
In the great duet of passion and rejection between prince and step-mother, Mr. Lee sounded increasingly in vocal straits though still managing some very beautiful phrases; Ms. Haroutunian's pitch problems deterred from full enjoyment of her appealing singing. There was a slight feeling of vocal effort in her aria "Non pianger mia compagna" despite - again - her overall niceness of sound and style.
The arrival of Ferruccio Furlanetto as Philip II at last gave the evening a true focus; the basso's authoritative singing heightened the impact of the performance from his first phrase. In the scene with Posa, Furlanetto actually gave me the chills with his dark, superbly accented vocalism. Nézet-Séguin gave a huge orchestral shock-wave after Mr. Salsi's "Orrenda, orrenda pace!" and Mr. Furlanetto put the final touch of drama on the scene with "Ti guarda!", at first whispered, then thundered.
I debated staying on - I would have loved to have heard Furlanetto in the great aria and his scene with James Morris (Grand Inquisitor). But I've always hated the Auto-da-Fe scene (not musically, but for what it depicts) and the thought of that plus two extended intermissions decided me to head out.
On the first page of my score, taken from the library, someone wrote "Learn Eboli by December '09". I wonder who it was, and if she did.
Metropolitan Opera House
April 15, 2015
DON CARLO
Giuseppe Verdi
Don Carlo...............Yonghoon Lee/Ricardo Tamura
Elizabeth of Valois.....Lianna Haroutounian [Debut]
Rodrigo.................Luca Salsi
Princess Eboli..........Nadia Krasteva [Debut]
Philip II...............Ferruccio Furlanetto
Grand Inquisitor........James Morris
Celestial Voice.........Heidi Stober
Friar...................Robert Pomakov
Tebaldo.................Amanda Woodbury
Count of Lerma..........Eduardo Valdes
Countess of Aremberg....Anne Dyas
Flemish Deputy..........Joseph Barron
Flemish Deputy..........Brandon Cedel
Flemish Deputy..........Christopher Job
Flemish Deputy..........Edward Parks
Flemish Deputy..........Tyler Simpson
Flemish Deputy..........Yunpeng Wang
Conductor...............Yannick Nézet-Séguin