The Verdi Project: Don Carlos

Verdi's last opera for Paris has a complicated history.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Troubled youth: the not-so-youthful Placido Domingo as Verdi's Don Carlos.
Photo © 1982 The Metropolitan Opera.

After the experience of Un Ballo in Maschera, Giuseppe Verdi found himself increasingly withdrawn from the world of opera. His hiatus was interrupted for the commissioning and premiere of La Forza del Destino, but the problems surrounding that opera did not encourage him to continue composing. However, he received a commission for the Paris Opera, to write a five-act grand opera in French for the 1866. That opera would be Don Carlos, and its genesis would be the most difficult of any major Verdi work.

Sending Don Carlos To Therapy

An in-depth look at Verdi's longest and most troubled opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Placido Domingo in Don Carlos.
Cover art © 1990 Deutsche Grammophon/UMG

Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos is an opera that is beloved by Verdi lovers, but one that took a very long time to find its audience. Based on a searing play by Friedrich Schiller. Don Carlos was originally composed for the 1869 season for the grand stage of the Paris Opera. The premiere of its initial French version was a late-career failure for the Italian composer, one of three largely unsuccessful attempts that Verdi made in his life to conquer the hearts of Parisian opera-goers. (The other two, Gerusalemme and Le Vepres Siciliennes are less well known.

The Year in Reviews: The Operas of 2015

The ten best opera performances of the year that was.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Dangerous curves: Marliss Peterson's performance in Lulu was a highlight of 2015.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

Despite the untimely death of Gotham Chamber Opera, 2015 was largely a successful year for the art form in the New York area and elsewhere. Here's the ten best opera performances that this reviewer saw this calendar year. All titles link to full Superconductor reviews. Chronological order with the oldest first.

Opera Roundup: At the Met, Too Short a Season

The Five Best Metropolitan Opera performances of 2014-15.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Very merry: Susan Graham as Hanna Glawar in The Merry Widow:
 a late-season saving grace at the Metropolitan Opera.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

Normally this is the post every year where I, your intrepid Superconductor author, round up the best of the Metropolitan Opera's season, having seen every one of its twenty-four productions. But that didn't happen this year. Since the Met press office does not offer press tickets to this publication, since the September introduction of a series of labyrinthine changes in the company's Rush Ticket program, this year made covering the Met a much more difficult task.

Opera Review: The King of Ashes

Don Carlo bows at Opera Philadelphia.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A lonely crown: Eric Owens is King Philip in Opera Philadelphia's Don Carlo.
Photo provided by Opera Philadelphia, photography by Kelly and Massa.

Don Carlo is Verdi's longest and grandest opera, playing out illicit passions and familial betrayals in the court of Spanish monarch King Philip II. In 1883, Verdi radically altered Carlo, lopping off the first act, adapting the libretto to Italian and rewriting key scenes. This new production by Opera Philadelphia (which will also visit Washington and Minnesota in coming seasons) adapts this stripped approach. On Sunday afternoon, the results were a taut, lean performance, with the brisk tempos of conductor Corrado Rovaris lending a sense of urgency to this long opera.

Opera Review: The Fire This Time

The Metropolitan Opera revives Don Carlo.
 by Paul J. Pelkonen

Bass-off: King Philip (Ferrucio Furlanetto, right) pleads with the Grand Inquisitor (James Morris)
in Act IV of Verdi's Don Carlo. Photo by Ken Howard copyright 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.)

Giuseppe Verdi’s operas conquered his native Italy in the 19th century, He then set his sights on Paris, (the center of the operatic world at the time) as his next goal. Don Carlo (originally: Don Carlos) was his third and final attempt at French grand opera. Verdi adapted a play by Friedrich Schiller into a sprawling five-hour examination of the troubled Spanish royal family in the reign of King Philip II. 

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Don Carlo

The Met revives Verdi's bleakest (and longest) opera...again.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Ferruccio Furlanetto remains a staple of the Met's revival of Don Carlo.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2010 The Metropolitan Opera.

Verdi conceived of Don Carlos (its original title) as a five-act grand opera for Paris, the center of the operatic world in 1866. (The Met performs the opera in Italian, using the composer's five-act 1883 revision. For linguistic reasons, the "s" disappears from the title.) There were rumors in the off-season that this revival would be sung in the original French...but no such luck, it's in Italian.

The Prisoner of Sixth Avenue

Or... My worst Fourth of July. (1991)
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The year was 1991. I had finished a desultory freshman year at Fordham University. Being a young college student (OK, I was 18 and a year ahead) I had to get myself a summer job.

The month before, I had started applying to record stores. Most of these were part of a large, uncaring chain run by a larger, uncaring holding company. Back then, these stores were everywhere in Manhattan. HMV. Tower. Coconuts. Sam Goody. Most were bloated, badly run supermarkets, each of which was filled with a vast selection of recorded music that most of the staff didn't care about.

But what did I know? I was 18. After several failed applications, I found out that the brand-new Sam Goody in Greenwich Village was hiring for its classical department.

"Classical?" I thought. "I can do that."

Opera Review: Five Hours, No Energy

The Met revives Verdi's Don Carlo.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Ferruccio Furlanetto (in red) as Philip II in Act III of Verdi's Don Carlo.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

Don Carlo, seen Monday night at the Metropolitan Opera is a behemoth among Verdi operas. The story of the Spanish prince and his unlikely struggle for personal (and sexual) freedom in the court of his father, King Philip II of Spain, clocks in at around four and a half hours, and that's with thirty minutes of music removed from the score. (The Met presents Verdi's final five-act revision from 1886 with some cuts.)

Anna Netrebko Cancels Japan Jaunt

Diva withdraws from Met tour, citing Chernobyl concerns.

She'll take her candle and go home. Anna Netrebko in a publicity photo for Anna Bolena.
Photo © 2011 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera is on its way to Japan, but Anna Netrebko is not.

The Russian diva, scheduled to sing Mimi in the company's touring production of La bohéme has announced her 11th-hour withdrawal from the tour. The decision was announced last night in a New York Times article by Daniel J. Wakin. The article included the following statement from the Met press office: "Ms. Netrebko changed her mind having lived through the tragedy of Chernobyl." You can read the full article here.

The decision of Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb to carry on the Japan tour despite the danger of leaked radiation from the damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima has been an unpopular one at the world's most famous opera company. The company arrived in Japan last night.

Ms. Netrebko is the fifth major artist to cancel on the Met's ill-starred tour of the Orient. So far, casualties include tenors Jonas Kaufman and Joseph Calleja, who both cited concerns about radiation leakage from the damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima. Olga Borodina cancelled, citing a need to rest her voice. Conductor James Levine, who is taking a five-month sabbatical for health reasons.


But the soprano, whose face adorns the Met's current marketing campaign and season ticket drive, is currently the biggest star at the Met. The diva is scheduled to open the season with a new production of Donizetti's Anna Bolena, a Metropolitan Opera premiere. In March, she will sing the title role in a new staging of Manon. Both performances will be included in the Met's schedule of Live in HD broadcasts for next year.

The Met's tour includes presentations of La bohéme, Lucia di Lammermoor and the company's new staging of Don Carlo. The cancellations have required some role shuffling. Barbara Frittoli, scheduled to sing Elisabeth in Don Carlo, will switch over to Bohéme. Russian soprano Marina Poplavskaya, who created the role of Elisabeth in this production, will step in to sing the role. She cancelled a Moscow concert appearance to join the Met in Japan.

The touring company includes 350 Met stage hands, extras, and musicians. The roster of and an impressive roster of singers: Mariusz Kwiecen, John Relyea, Rene Pape, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Diana Damrau. Tenors Marcelo Álvarez and Rolando Villazon, returning after a lengthy hiatus due to voice problems, will add firepower to the three productions. Met principal guest conductor Fabio Luisi will take James Levine's place on the podium. Gianandrea Noseda will also conduct.

The Met's two-week tour will conclude on June 14 with a concert in Tokyo. The program of that concert is listed as "TBA."

A Prince By Any Other Name

The Long Tortured History and Multiple Identities of Verdi's Don Carlos

(This article is heavily indebted to the chapter Don Carlo in Volume III of Julian Budden's authoratative The Operas of Verdi.)

The historical Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias.

Don Carlos, Don Carlo, or whatever you call it is Verdi's darkest opera, a masterpiece that suffered a difficult premiere, heavy cuts, and complex linguistic issues to eventually emerge as one of the composer's most popular operas. But that process took ninety years, from the work's premiere in 1866 to a hugely successful Covent Garden staging in 1956 that gave Don Carlos its much deserved place in the international repertory.

The opera was originally written for the Paris Opera, and was the third "grand" opera that Verdi wrote for that theater. Verdi used a French libretto based on Don Karlos, a German play by Friedrich Schiller. Schiller's drama was based on the life of the son of King Philip II, the "Catholic King" who held Spain in an iron grip. Schiller's hero was a romanticized version of the real infante of Spain, a dangerous, violent prince entirely unsuited to the difficult business of ruling. The real Carlos was locked up by his father, and died in isolation.

On the night before the premiere in 1867, Verdi found out that the five-act opera would run past midnight, making it impossible for Parisians living in the suburbs to catch trains home. The composer was forced to cut the first ten minutes (the scene with the woodcutters) to compensate.


Unfortunately, he left in the scene between King Philip and the Grand Inquisitor. At the moment when the exasperated King bursts out with "Tais-toi, prétre!" ("Shut up, priest!") the very Catholic Empress of France turned her back on the stage. This ensured that Don Carlos bombed in its opening run, joining La Traviata, I Vespri Siciliani and Stiffelio in the ranks of Verdi works that stiffed on opening night.

As the opera moved beyond its Paris run, Verdi made more cuts. First to go was the "La Peregrine" ballet, a requirement for Paris performance that added nothing to the opera's plot, and the insurrection scene that ends Act IV. But even with trims, the new opera failed to catch on.

In 1883, Verdi worked for nine months to prepare a four-act version (now called "Don Carlo"), to a new Italian translation based on the French libretto. Not content with removing the woodcutters, he axed the first act. As a result, Carlo's romanza "Je le vieux" became "Io lo vidi," and was moved from the forests of France to the austere Spanish monastery of San Yuste.

The composer made extensive revisions to his new first act, rewriting the crucial duet between Posa and the King to bring the work closer to Schiller's play and adding some of the excised Act I material to give the work some context. He slashed the scene before the ballet, and revised the prison scene between Carlo and Posa. Finally he changed the ending slightly, cutting out a chorus of Inquisitors and giving the final scene a typical fortissimo ending.

This four-act Carlo proved popular with audiences. But he wasn't done yet. In 1886, Ricordi, Verdi's publishers put out a five-act version of the score, giving opera houses the option of restoring the Fontainebleau scene as a curtain raiser with "Io lo vidi" back in its proper place.

This led to further revisions, a new shortened version of the chorus before "Io lo vidi" and some more tweaks to the later acts. In 1956, an historic production at Covent Garden made this opera popular in its five-act version, and the advent of the recording industry has ensured that multiple revised (and unrevised) versions of the opera have been recorded.

Finally, some conductors (most notably James Levine) have brought back the long-silent woodcutters, claiming that the opening scene in the forest makes more dramatic sense than the abrupt horn-calls that start the opera. The Levine recording with the Metropolitan Opera forces is the only one in the catalogue that includes this scene in its proper place at the start of the opera.

Today, all three versions of Don Carlo/s are performed. The French conductor Bertrand de Billy has performed the original, five-act 1867 version of the opera in Vienna and Barcelona. The Met and Covent Garden favor the 1886, with the first act restored. But there is also an argument to be made for the concise power of the four-act 1883 version, which packs the drama into a tighter structure. It makes the whole opera darker and more oppressive, but in Don Carlos, or Don Carlo,, that's not a bad thing.

DVD Review: Come for the Opera, (Stay for the Pizza!)

Don Carlos from the Vienna State Opera

Don Carlos (Ramon Vargas) and Princess Eboli (Nadja Michael)
celebrate the imminent arrival of pizza in Peter Konwitschny's Don Carlos.
Photo © 2004 Vienna State Opera/Arthaus Musik

This two-DVD set, filmed in 2005 at the Vienna State Opera, is the first visual record of a performance of the complete original version of Verdi's Don Carlos. Sung in French by a mostly idiomatic cast and led by the talented French conductor Bertrand de Billy, this is fascinating to watch if you're an aficionado of the frequently performed 1883 revision of the opera, or a lover of Verdi in general. But the clever production is sometimes undercut by a middling cast.

Don Carlos is Verdi's third and final attempt to write a French grand opera. It premiered in 1867, in the wake of works by Halévy and Meyerbeer. But the excessive length of the original version (these discs run just over four hours) led the composer to trim the opening chorus with the woodcutters in the forest of Fontainebleau. Further cuts over the years included the beginning of Act III, the lengthy ballet, and a chorus of inquisitors in the last act. Verdi revised the opera heavily in 1884, cutting the first act entirely and using Italian translation of the original book. Today, many companies restore the first act, an idea Verdi approved in 1886.

This is a good (not great) cast. Ramón Vargas holds his own, singing lyrically through the title role. He sings "Je le vieux" when lying prone, (very Homer Simpson) but hits the notes. As Elisabeth, Iano Tamar lacks bloom at the very top of her range, but improves for her touching Act V showpiece. Bo Skovhus is yet another skilled lieder singer tackling Rodrigue. He overacts, but sounds good in his three duets with Mr. Vargas.

Don Carlo on Disc: An Audio-da-fé.

Maybe I just like it for the cover art.

Don Carlo (in French, Don Carlos) is Verdi's longest and darkest opera. It's also beset by textual questions. Sing it in French? Italian? English? Five acts? Four acts? Add the ballet? Cut the first scene? All these versions are available on CD in one form or another.

There's something about Don Carlo that appealed to label execs and maestri. (Could it be the smell of burning heretics?) Some conductors (Riccardo Muti) tried to turn a mis-casting into compact disc gold. Example: the disastrous La Scala recording on EMI starring an out-of-his-depth Luciano Pavarotti in the title role. Others (James Levine, Bernard Haitink) went with lesser singers, with mixed results.

Either way, there's a lot of Don Carlos on disc. The really good ones are sung in Italian, and are the five-act versions. Considering that a four-act Don Carlo will also fit on the same number of discs (three) we can quickly eliminate the sets by Muti and Herbert von Karajan.


Two in Italian


Royal Opera House of Covent Garden cond. Carlo Maria Giulini
Don Carlo: Placído Domingo
Elisabeth: Montserrat Caballe
Eboli: Shirley Verrett
Rodrigo: Sherrill Milnes
Philip: Ruggero Raimondi
The Grand Inquisitor: Giovanni Foiani

This is a pretty definitive recording of the five-act version with a great Verdi conductor who knows the opera back-to-front. Placído Domingo and Montserrat Caballe are appealing together in the first two acts. Milnes and Domingo are a great pair in the big duet scenes. The late Shirley Verrett rocks the "Song of the Veil" and "O Don Fatale." Raimondi is great casting as the King, and his duet with Giovanni Foiani is kick-ass.

Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala cond. Gabriele Santini
Don Carlo: Flaviano Labo
Elisabeth: Antonietta Stella
Eboli: Fiorenza Cossotto
Rodrigo: Ettore Bastianini
Philip: Boris Christoff
The Grand Inquisitor: Ivo Vinco


(The Solti recording is most people's choice for an alternate. But I don't like his Verdi. I like this one!)

This long-out-of-print DG recording has Boris Christoff as King Philip and great stereo sound. The choral singing is a little rough, as is the erstwhile Carlo of tenor Flaviano Labo, but this version of the five-act score has a raw edge and vitality that makes it an intriguing alternative to the Giulini. It's been reissued as part of a mammoth (and dirt cheap) DG box set: Verdi: Great Operas From La Scala. If you spot the old set in the original red slipcase with the cool album art, (see above) grab it. No, you can't have mine.

And one in French:
Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala cond. Claudio Abbado
Don Carlos: Placído Domingo
Elisabeth: Katia Ricciarelli
Eboli: Luciana Valentini-Terrani
Rodrigue: Leo Nucci
Philip: Ruggero Raimondi
The Grand Inquisitor: Nicola Ghiaurov

On the plus side, it's in French. On the minus, this gigantic four-disker features an Italian conductor leading an Italian orchestra with a (mostly) Italian cast. Domingo sounds terrific, as do the duelling "all-star" bass pair of Raimondi and Ghiaurov. Ricciarelli and Valentini-Terrani act well, and their singing is just passable. But the reason to track this relic is for the fourth disc, which features an appendix of six scenes that are standard cuts. The famous "Woodcutters" opening is presented here, along with the gorgeous (if long) ballet music and the original ending featuring a chorus of shouting Inquisitors putting poor Carlos through the wringer.

This is NOT a first choice. But if you fall in love with this opera (and I did, back in 1995) this is an interesting, if not essenital set to listen to. Especially because you can load it into a computer and program your IPod to play the "cut" scenes in the correct order. The booklet even shows you where to insert them--something that was technologically impossible when this set was originally released--if you were willing to stay up all night programming your CD changer. Not that I ever did anything like that of course....*ahem*.

Dearly Departed Dexter: Don Carlo Remembered

The next opera review coming to this blog (which will probably be written next Tuesday morning, is of the new Nicholas Hytner production of Don Carlo, which bows at the Met on Monday night at 7pm. But before that prima, I feel obligated to RANT say a few words of praise for the previous staging.

Act III of the John Dexter Don Carlo at the Met.
Photo from OperaChic.

The Met's previous Don Carlo was directed by John Dexter, and dates from an era before lavish Franco Zeffirelli stagings were the order of the day at the big house on 64th St. Dominated by a huge, black show curtain depicting the royal crest of King Philip II, Dexter's vision of Spain was of a series of increasingly bleak landscapes: the frozen forest of Fontainebleau in France, the tomb of King Charles V, and the King's private chambers in the Escorial. This Carlo felt like a feverish, five-hour nightmare, with powerful visuals and traditional costumes that actually made the characters look like Spanish nobles. And it was detailed with little historical accuracies, right down to a cute little eyepatch for the Princess Eboli.

The only break in all this darkness came in the second scene of Act II. The auto da fé (where King Philip celebrates his authority by having few sinners burned alive by the Inquisition) took place under blue skies and blood-red banners blowing in the breeze. The bright sound of the chorus, singing in celebration as the pyres were lit, underlined the chilling authority of the Catholic church, a central message of Verdi's darkest opera.

Don Carlo is a long opera--Verdi's longest, in fact. Written as a French grand opera, it's five acts with a ballet and a complete recording of the score clocks in at five hours. Most opera houses slash the whole first act, moving the tenor's big number up to Act II and presenting a four-act torso. But the Dexter/Met staging restored the entire first act, putting the tenor arioso "Io lo vidi" in its proper dramatic context.

Act III of the Hytner Don Carlo as staged at Covent Garden.
Photo from MostlyOpera.

Music director James Levine even insisted on adding a standard cut: the first scene of the opera featuring a group of woodcutters freezing in the forest. his made the whole evening clocked in at four hours and 35 minutes, but the results were worth it.

Now, a bunch of woodcutters may not sound like much. Truth is, they have little to do with the rest of the opera. Verdi himself (citing reasons of length) cut the scene before the opera's Paris premiere. But seeing the opera with the woodcutters scene restored, the bizarre choice made by Isabella (to marry Philip even though she is in love with Don Carlo, his son) makes dramatic sense. The people are freezing and starving, and she has to put her country ahead of her personal life.

Don't get me wrong. I'm looking forward to seeing this production on Monday night. And I might go more than once if it proves itself to be worthy. But I'll miss that old Don Carlo and I'm sorry to see this classic production retired and replaced.

Besides, I've heard that the new staging cuts out the woodcutters.

Recording Recommendation: Putting Don Carlos in Order

Released in 1990, the Claudio Abbado/Placido Domingo version of Don Carlos (DG) was the first commercial recording of this opera in its original French. Along with the five-act version of the opera (with the often-cut first act put back in its proper place, complete with "Je le vieux") the hefty four-disc set included the opera's famous "cut" scenes. However, in a classic example of record company weirdness, the cuts were relegated to the end of the fourth disc, as a series of extras. So with CDs or cassettes, it was almost impossible to listen to the full score of Don Carlos in order.

These trimmed scenes are pretty substantial--and include:

• The opening scene of the opera, where a chorus of woodcutters in the forest of Fontainebleau bemoan their hunger, and then encounter Elisabeth de Valois. Verdi cut this on opening night for length, but it puts the events that follow (particuarly Elisabeth's decision to marry her fiancee's father, Philip II) in context, and changes the whole tone of the opera. The Met performs this scene, albeit in Italian.
  
• The "Ballet of the Queen". A spectacular Paris Opera ballet, this has no effect except stopping the action in the middle of Act III for some nice music. Cut when the opera was revised for Italian performance.
  
• The original "Insurrection" scene complete with thundering chorus of inquisitors. Trimmed down in performance, here it is similar to the "Radames Radames Radames" scene in Aida.
  

The Abbado recording is not the best Don Carlos on the market (Domingo's earlier recording with Giulini wins that particular bowl of nachos) but it is a solid enough performance, despite the oddity of an Italian cast and chorus singing in French. Domingo is in excellent form as the Infante, and Ruggerio Raimondi is an imposing King Philip. The ladies are less well served. The late Luciana Valantini-Terrani is a smallish, but competent Eboli. Katia Ricciarelli is past her prime here, a squally, and whiny Elisabeth--but she rebounds in the final act.

The chorus and orchestra of La Scala is in top form, although the whole recording suffers from too much knob-twiddling by the Deutsche Grammophon tonmeister. What's neat though, and what makes this recording worth revisiting is the IPod. If you upload the four CDs into your ITunes, you can then make a playlist and ut all the missing pieces in the correct order. Now, with the Woodcutter's Chorus at the opening, the ballet in its proper, interruptive place, and the Inquisitors back to work shouting at Carlos and Posa, this finally sounds like a proper Don Carlos. And best of all, the missing pieces fit perfectly, unveiling the breadth and scope of Verdi's grandest opera.

DVD Review: Don Carlos at the Chatelet

Luc Bondy's 1996 production of Don Carlos was staged, recorded and filmed at the Chatelet in Paris. These seven performances were blessed with an all-star cast, loaded with important singers either starting their careers (Roberto Alagna) or at the height of their dramatic powers (Karita Mattila, Jose Van Dam.)

After a long delay, this critically important Carlos was finally released on Kultur DVD in 2003. It's not a first choice--the Met DVD from the early '80s with Domingo is better. However, this is the best French-language version of the opera available--and this opera is better in French, the language in which the libretto was originally written.


This recording was made early in Alagna's career, and shows him at his best. He always sounds better in French, and this Carlos is a dramatic highlight of his career. He sings with passion and verve, hopeful during "Je le vieux" and powerful in the character's three showdowns with the King.

Baritone Thomas Hampson branched out into dramatic roles with this complex turn as Posa. Here, clad all in black with stubble and hair extensions, he comes across as part freedom fighter, part rock star. (In the real Spanish court, he'd never last a minute.) His fourth death scene shows how smart a singer Hampson is, the command of emotion and power elevates this Spanish tragedy to the next level of emotional involvement.

As Philip, Jose Van Dam is more baritone than bass. He misses that last bit of bone-shaking gravitas that one expects from this character. He is at his best when vulnerable--the Act IV monologue and the confrontation with the Inquisitor (Erik Halfvarson). When Halfvarson limps onstage, hooded and stooped, accompanied by little bursts of hellfire, the effect makes one wonder: is the King is really having this conversation, or has Verdi's Grand Inquisitor become the demonic figure from The Brothers Karamazov?

Don Carlos only has two major female roles, but they are both in capable hands. Karita Mattila's performance as Elisabeth de Valois is even better on DVD. She is heartbreaking in the Fontainebleu scene with Carlos. But when she arrives in Spain, Elisabeth is a different, transformed woman. She is a Queen, and that is how Mattila plays it--she has become part of the opera's icy, aloof power structure. Waltraud Meier plays Eboli as the fiery opposite. The acclaimed Wagnerian mezzo chews the scenery, and she's vocally unreliable, picking her way slowly through the many pitfalls of "O Don Fatale". But she brings down the house, and importantly, looks the part as the most beautiful woman in Spain.

Thomas Hampson and Roberto Alagna sing the duet from Act II of Don Carlos

Mr. Bondy's production has its share of controversial moments. For once, Elisabeth is on present onstage--asleep for the first half of the King's Act IV monologue. She wakes up and walks out in disgust halfway through. When she re-enters, she nearly trips over the Inquisitor in her haste. The entrance of the Monk in Act II is also effective--the eye is drawn to no less than three different monks (including one who is assiduously scrubbing the monastery floor) before you realize which character on stage is actually singing. It's a great trick, and one that points toward the opera's ambivalent ending, when the forces of heaven and hell intervene to save Carlos from the Inquisition.