Customer Reviews

Verdi: Don Carlos

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If you've been waiting for an authentic, 100-proof French-language DON CARLOS with no textual mix-and-matching from Verdi's later revisions of the opera, this live recording dating from October 2004 is for you. It has every note the audience at Paris heard at the premiere on March 11, 1867, and then some, because it includes music Verdi submitted to the Paris Opera but cut in rehearsals before the first night. Its sheer comprehensiveness (at 245+ minutes, the opera stretches almost to PARSIFAL length) makes it the French-language CARLOS of choice for the time being. Of its two major-label rivals in French, Pappano/EMI omits the opening choral introduction and the ballet music and makes use of a schizophrenic edition entirely the conductor's own, corresponding to no staging seen in the composer's lifetime (Pappano freely cherry-picks from Verdi's revisions of the 1880s, and at one point jumps forward 20 years in mid-duet); the pioneering Abbado/DG, on the other hand, just gives us a French-language recording of the familiar Modena edition of the opera as staged in 1886 (that is, the restoration of the Fontainebleau act followed by Verdi's tightened four-act version [i.e., DON CARLO, no "S"], which at times is strikingly different musically from the French CARLOS with which he began), plus a disc of appendices that de Billy incorporates into the performance proper.

For CARLO/S fanatics, the Orfeo recording will be both irresistible and fascinating. I have more recordings of DON CARLO/S than I'd care to count or reveal, and still there was music here I'd never actually heard performed (though very little, in my judgment, that Verdi did not improve upon in his later revisions). Those coming new to the opera would be better served by any of several other recordings, including Giulini/EMI (probably the critical consensus choice), Solti/Decca, as well as Karajan/EMI. The first two are of the five-act Modena edition in Italian; the Karajan, also sung in Italian, is the gold-standard recording of the four-act version that some (not I) still prefer. All three of these have casts with which de Billy's cannot begin to compare, which is more a sign of the times than anything else. Of de Billy's cast, the standout is Ramon Vargas's lyrical Carlos, another worthy assumption of a role that has been lucky on disc (Bergonzi, Domingo x 2, Carreras). The work of the others might have been better appreciated in the theater than on record, if the booklet's description of their abilities as singing actors is accurate. I found Alastair Miles's monochromatic, often unsteady Phillippe most problematic, with Bo Skovhus's heavy-handed and singularly uningratiating Rodrigue a runner-up. Simon Yang's Grand Inquisiteur, while no patrician display of musicianship either, at least gives us that black, chilling sound we always want to hear in this part but rarely do (his voice sets off well, tonally, against Miles's). The two leading ladies have the right ideas -- Iano Tamar sings with conviction and seems plugged in to the queen's dilemma, even if great Elisabeths of the past offered more in the way of refinement and eloquence of execution. Nadja Michael has temperament to burn and is a well-qualified Eboli in every way except the ability to suggest in sound that "fatal beauty" that Cossotto, Bumbry, Verrett, Simionato, and others had by nature -- I wager few would find Michael's sounds seductive. Conductor de Billy at least assumes some expressive responsibility and is alert to possibilities of tempo and balance. The chorus and orchestra are fine, and this is a much better live recording in technical terms than EMI gave Pappano, with its dim, recessed orchestral sound.

There is no libretto, but there are a cued synopsis and some helpful notes on textual matters. The author makes a case that Verdi's earlier thoughts as heard on this recording (in the case of the great tenor/baritone and bass/baritone duets of Act II, for example) are in some ways preferable and more stylistically "correct" -- I remain unconvinced, but you be the judge.