Cinci’s Don Carlo Grand Opera
in truest sense

By Burt Saidel

Perfection! In case I did not make myself clear, the word is perfection.

Cincinnati Opera mounted a most difficult and demanding opera, Verdi’s Don Carlo, as the second production of this summer festival season. Don Carlo is a story, based mostly on historic facts, about the collision of a medieval mentality with the emerging humanism of the Renaissance. The factual dates are actually the turn of a century, 1599 into the 1600s.

The dark and foreboding plot deals with persons, royalty and commoners, who are ruled by fearful obedience to their king and their church. In this case both king and church remain medieval in their autocratic ways. The King wanted to be like God, only his model was a vengeful and angry God.

The next generation is revealed in the character of Don Carlo. The crisis defines the major generation gap between father, King Phillip II, and son.

To complicate the clash even further, Carlo has met Elizabeth, daughter of the King of France. They fall in love and are promised to each other.

Wait a minute! Political forces betrothed Elizabeth to none other than King Phillip. Carlo loses a beautiful fiancée and gets a stepmother. Phillip gets more than he bargained for. Not every one of his wishes comes true in spite of his regal authority.

My previous experiences with the opera have been quite dull. Three productions over 40 years have left me coldly uncaring about the characters and musically unsatisfied.

I depended on Impresario Evans Mirages and his gifted staff to replace those dreary experiences with operatic jewels. In 2006, Cincinnati rescued Tales of Hoffman from my personal junk pile and made it a stellar memory. I had the faith that Don Carlo would receive the same treatment.

I underestimated the power of Mirages and the Cincinnati Opera staff. The experience was, to repeat for emphasis, perfection. Evans had issued a proclamation that this was to be the finest assemblage of Verdi voices conceivable. He was right.

The cast included several major characters in debut roles. American tenor Frank Porretta joined Italian baritone Marco Caria, American soprano Michelle DeYoung and American bass Morris Robinson in the major roles of Don Carlo, Princess Eboli, Rodrigo and the menacing Grand Inquisitor. The cast was completed by the God Wotan personified, James Morris as the king, and Dayton Opera superstar Angela Brown as the hapless queen.

Rath er than describe the plot and each character, let me describe what makes overall perfection. Impresario Evans joins many others in stating that opera is voices. But, opera is more than voices singing. They must sing together, to each other and act with the full range of emotions. All of this is set to complex music which must be cued to each vocal line

From the opening notes of the orchestral overture, Conductor Richard Buckley wove a spell. If I could describe the opera, it is not big arias separated by recitatives. It is a seamless musical flow. Every part commands an importance. Both male and female choruses had intense and vital sections.

Throughout the opera, no voice soared or retreated into subtlety without the orchestra, a flute, an oboe or a harp tone supporting it with blended sounds. I am certain that there were several thousand cues which had to be observed. Again, perfection is the only word that comes to mind.

The machinations of the plot, the characters’ personae, both noble and dastardly, came alive with the singing. The staging made the clarity even greater as the movement on stage seemed natural and appropriate.

The set, a very kinetic unit which altered before our eyes in many of the scenes, became a highlight in the progress of the opera. The lighting, there was a dark side but it was never gloomy, focused interest.

In scene after scene, the singing was so beautiful that the principals had to remain frozen to accept prolonged applause. After a major soliloquy, James Morris was glued to his desk chair for an interminable period while the audience continued to pour out loving appreciation. Finally, the lights changed intensity to signal, “That’s enough, let the opera continue.”

Literarily, there is no fit ending for this story. The king, despotic in his unconcern for his people but clinging to his ideas zealously, ends up the winner. Or does he? The ghost of his father, Emperor Charles V, sung by versatile David Michael, proves not to be a ghost but the hidden emperor who retreated from the world into secret monastic life.

Shakespeare would have taken this story and made it into a comedy, perhaps Much Ado about Something. Verdi, part of the politics of Italy’s revolution creating a unified country, was sympathetic to the revolution against the Spanish King but had a strange way of showing it – the King wins?

No matter, Cincinnati Opera has created a great piece of Grand Opera in its truest sense. Perhaps its match may not be seen again. I can only hope that each member of this enlightened cast will carry their artistry into every future role they perform. Once you have experienced perfection, hold on to each scruple of its memory and hope it comes again.