Don Carlo- The Metropolitan Opera [VHS]

Metropolitan Blocbuster
This is the kind of sumptuous traditional production that the Metropolitan does so well. Don Carlo is perhaps Domingo's best role. Quilico is very impressive. Freni starts low-key, but that is because she knows that she will own the last act if she reserves the strength. In the end, she succeeds brilliantly.

Great recording
I greatly enjoy the complete nature of this DVD. It includes the often omitted 1st act chorus whose removal robs the opera of so much of its power. Not to mention the lead singers are Domingo and Freni... need I say more.

A very good, complete production of Don Carlos
This is an outstanding performance on DVD of one of the grandest of Operas ever composed by Verdi. I would rate it 5 stars but with some strong reservations. This is the most complete performance of the opera available and that in a way must be a tribute to the conductor James Levine. Placido Domingo as Don Carlos gives one of his best performances ever, recorded on any medium. He sings beautifully, with great passion and fulfils the vocal demands of the role with great ease and authority. His acting and visual impression of the role are excellent. He plays the part of the unfortunate rebel-prince very convincingly. I can hardly think of anyone who could have been better as Don Carlos in any production ever. Mirella Freni provides us with an excellent vocal and visual interpretation of the young Queen of Spain. She is alas, a touch past her prime, at least visually (unfortunately none of us remains young for ever) but none the less, she provides us with a very moving performance, beautifully sung. If one listens to her outstanding performance of the same role on CD under Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra recorded in 1978, five years earlier, then my point will become clearer. Grace Bumbry is a veteran in the role of Eboli. Vocally she is very good. Visually, she portrays the princes with great conviction, but especially in her case she is someone far too old for the role she is portraying. I feel that Baltsa on the Sony DVD with Karajan s better. Louis Quilico makes a good realisation of the role of Rodrigo. He is visually and vocally adequate, without being in any sense outstanding. Cappuccilli on Sony is far better and Gobbi's performance for E.M.I. on the 1954 CD is at a totally different level. Ghiaurov is also a veteran at the role of the King of Spain. He provides us with an strong portrayal of the King, but not really exceptional. He is vocally ample for the role and plays the part convincingly. One has only to listen to Christoff on the 1954 CD from E.M.I. to realise what an ideal exponent of the role can be. Visually, Christoff at Covent Garden in the late fifties and early sixties, under the direction of Visconti also provided us with a visual interpretation of the part, unlikely to be equalled in the near future. Ramey in the E.M.I. DVD from La Scala provides us with a much better performance, both vocally and visually. Furlanetto is simply bad and inadequate for the role of the Inquisitor, both vocally and visually. He is even worse as Phillip on the Sony DVD under Karajan. James Levine in my opinion is a mediocre conductor for Verdi. He cannot make the music flow or portray the passion that either Karajan for Sony or Muti for E.M.I. are far more capable of. A pity because, as I said to begin with, it is to his great credit that he provides us with such a complete performance of this important work. The production by John Dexter is good, with nice sets and costumes but rather dark lighting, especially in the first act. The Metropolitan combines acts 1 & 2 and acts 4 & 5 and names it a 3 act opera, which is not. This is only a minor point. If you really want to see a lavish Don Carlo on DVD go to the E.M.I. from La Scala staged by Zeffirelli. Not as good as either of the Visconti productions for London or Rome, but none the less spectacular. The image and the sound on this Deutsche Grammophon two DVD edition are good for 1983, although I have seen better from the same period. It is preferable to the the One-disc version of the same performance on Pioneer Classics. It is definitely worth buying.

The Perfect Don Carlos Of The Stage
Verdi's Don Carlos was a big spectacle in its time and the Metropolitan Opera pulled out all the stops during this production in March of 83-84. It starred Placido Domingo in what was one of his signature roles (he had virtually owned the role after the success of the EMI recording with Montserrat Caballe and Sherill Milnes). Domingo was a dramatically gifted tenor who specialized in princely roles (if one can look at it this way). His handsome looks, beautiful and radiant voice, and charisma served him well. As Don Carlos, he never sung with more romantic phrasing. His beloved Elisabeth Di Valois is sung by Mirella Freni, a purely lyric soprano with a big following and many recordings to boot. Freni is a fabulous Queen, but I would prefer for the soprano to be a lyrico-spinto like Leontyne Price, who never sang the role on stage. Mezzos like Grace Bumbry who also sing soprano make fine Elisabeths. But Freni is graceful, elegant and her voice is faultlessly beautiful. The rest of the cast- bass Nicolai Ghiurov and Paul Plishka are doing a terrific job. Ghiurov gets a lot of the more beautiful moments and his voice is gorgeous and majestic. PLishka is a fine actor and singer. The production was modeled after the 19th century stage design, and is old fashioned, except for maybe the extreme grim outlook of it- everyone is wearing black and the Inquisition is a heavy shadow over the set. A great opera. Five stars.

Verdi's opera of love and politics
Under the sensitive direction of James Levine, Placido Domingo plays Don Carlo, heir to the Spanish throne, as close to the edge of madness. I think this interpretation works much better than playing him as Schiller's romantic hero--plus it's more accurate, since the historical Don Carlo was reputedly insane. Levine's production is a majestic, somber interpretation of Verdi at his most Spanish, and is visually gorgeous. This 1983 Metropolitan Opera "Don Carlo" is also one of the best cast (except for Louis Quilico as Rodrigo), and most haunting of all my Met Verdi DVDs. Mirella Freni has been criticized as not having a 'big enough' voice for the role of Elisabeth de Valois, but I think she is perfect: regal, beautiful, sweetly sorrowful. Her duet with Domingo in the oft-omitted Fountainbleu scene has a tremulous delicacy, made all the more poignant because we know her page is about to show up and tell her that she must marry Phillip II, not Don Carlo with whom she has just fallen in love. Even though Sam Ramey is my favorite Phillip II, voice-wise (in Ricardo Muti's 1992 La Scala production), Nicolai Ghiaurov is perfect as the ruthless, morbidly Catholic tyrant. When he first appears on camera, I thought, "My god, that man IS Phillip II." What an eerie resemblance. He even sings with a Castillan lisp. Ghiaurov commands the stage, whether he is bullying his somewhat wimpy son, tormenting his sorrowful queen, or bargaining with the evil Grand Inquisitor (Ferruccio Furlanetto). When he sings his Act IV aria, "Ella giamma m'amo," his introspective interpretation rounds out his character, not as a haughty king, but as a suffering older husband who knows his beautiful young Queen will never love him. Grace Bumbry is a haughty, calculating, technically gorgeous Princess Eboli, right down to her historically correct eye-patch. I didn't find her seductive--becoming King Phillip's mistress seemed to be a business transaction for her. She was a little too cold to really convince me that she had a change of heart about the Queen in the Act IV study scene, but Bumbry absolutely rips the 'Veil Song' in the garden. I've never heard it sung better. Her aria of repentance, "O don fatale," was the perfect cap to her character, and deserved its long ovation. What a performance! Ghiaurov IS the King. Freni IS the Queen. Domingo IS Don Carlo. The only casting mistake was Quilico's blustering, smirking Rodrigo. I could not understand what Don Carlo or the King ever saw in his character. Plus he sounded strained and tinny, especially in the duets with Domingo. I understand this was one of Quilico's break-through roles back in the 1960's, but he does not adorn this otherwise marvelous performance.