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After the experience of Un Ballo in Maschera, Giuseppe Verdi found himself increasingly withdrawn from the world of opera.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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.