Is Don Carlos out of favour?

[alywin]

Discussion on the Proms thread reinforced something I've been wondering for a while: is the French Don Carlos out of favour at the moment? Every time I've noticed a production of that-opera-based-on-Schiller's-play recently, it's always been the Italian Don Carlo. Yet I'm sure back in the 90s people were saying how superior the French version was to the Italian ...

[Richard Tarleton]

Discussion on the Proms thread reinforced something I've been wondering for a while: is the French Don Carlos out of favour at the moment? Every time I've noticed a production of that-opera-based-on-Schiller's-play recently, it's always been the Italian Don Carlo. Yet I'm sure back in the 90s people were saying how superior the French version was to the Italian ...

I'm told there are whole message boards devoted to Don Carlo[s].

Didn't Haitink do it in French at Covent Garden? and certainly WNO did around the turn of this century.

This came up recently, and I can only re-quote Charles Osborne in The Complete Operas of Verdi: "[Italian] was, after all, Verdi's own language, and the only one he spoke fluently. His knowledge of French, though extensive, was imperfect, and I do not think that he set it particularly well. I certainly cannot agree with the view that the French of Don Carlos lies more naturally on the vocal line than the Italian of Don Carlo....And it should be remembered that, when he came to compose Aida, Verdi refused to set a French libretto by Camille du Locle, and himself worked on an Italian libretto with Antonio Ghislanzoni who translated du Locle's French. All things considered, Verdi's Don Carlo is to be preferred to his Don Carlos.

It sounds far better in Italian.

[Flosshilde]

It sounds far better in Italian.

That may be so, but there is also the question of which version - is the Italian version usually performed now the one without the first act, & the French version the one with? I think that without the Fountainebleau scene the portrayal/explanation of the relationship between Carlos & Elizabeth is weaker. Which is, of course, a question of which is better dramatically, & opera, as we (should) know, is not just about the music .

[Richard Tarleton]

That may be so, but there is also the question of which version - is the Italian version usually performed now the one without the first act, & the French version the one with? I think that without the Fountainebleau scene the portrayal/explanation of the relationship between Carlos & Elizabeth is weaker. Which is, of course, a question of which is better dramatically, & opera, as we (should) know, is not just about the music .

Agree entirely, you have to have the Fontainbleu scene to establish Carlos's and Elizabeth's re relationship. The narrative is roughly as follows: the French original was premiered in 1867, in 1882-3 Verdi prepared a 4-act version in Italian, to "reduce the opera to more manageable roportions" for Italian houses (New Grove), cutting the Fontainbleu scene. He also composed some new music. Finally, in 1886, a 5-act Italian version was first performed in Modena - basically the 4-act 1884 version with an Italian translation of the 1867 Fontainbleu scene restored as Act 1. As Andrew Porter, leading authority on Don Carlo, said, "...the great opera is surely Don Carlo of 1886, uncut, as on [the Giulini] records".

[David-G]

Verdi composed the 1883 version of "Don Carlos" in French, not in Italian. The 1884 performances of this at La Scala were in Italian translation. Andrew Porter is scathing about this, in the programme for the 1996 Covent Garden performances in French, he writes: "The familiar Italian translation distorts much of the music, blunts fine points of vocal declamation, alters the rhythms, and fancifies what in the original is clear and direct."

[Richard Tarleton]

Yes, and Roger Parker makes the same point - apologies for my confusion. I think Andrew Porter may have changed his tune over the years, having made his claims for the 5-act, 1886 version back in the 1970s. Certainly the ROH currently use a 5-act Italian version. righly so in my opinion. To a non-Francophone ear, I think it's a no-brainer. But this is a subject on which people are never going to agree. I boycotted the WNO performance because it hurts listening to Don Carlo in French. But then I learnt it from the Giulini records and the legendary Visconti production at Covent Garden.

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

Is the French Don Carlos out of favour? I rather think it is, but probably because there are not that many singers capable of singing the role (convincingly) in French. In the 1990s, we had the Châtelet/ Royal Opera production, graced by singers who are very comfortable singing French - Hampson, José Van Dam, Roberto Alagna - unlike the earlier Abbado studio recording on DG.

I did a survey of recordings of the opera for International Record Review the other year (11,000 words) in which I also considered the performing versions available. Scholarship unearthed the discovery of missing scenes discarded before the 1867 premiere and various performances attempt to reinstate these. Verdi’s second thoughts are almost always better, but the cuts contain important music. The most important, to my mind, is the duet between Philippe and Carlos after Posa’s death, material which Verdi later salvaged for the Lacrymosa of his Requiem.

Whichever language is chosen, the five act version is hugely preferable. The Fontainebleu first act is crucial to our understanding of the Carlos-Elisabeth relationship. However, interviewing Krassimira Stoyanova earlier this year, she revealed that she only took on the role of Elisabetta (in Italian) because it was the four act version - the five act version is so much more demanding a role.

Verdi composed the 1883 version of "Don Carlos" in French, not in Italian. The 1884 performances of this at La Scala were in Italian translation. Andrew Porter is scathing about this, in the programme for the 1996 Covent Garden performances in French, he writes: "The familiar Italian translation distorts much of the music, blunts fine points of vocal declamation, alters the rhythms, and fancifies what in the original is clear and direct."

Yes, he's absolutely correct. Hearing the original French text, one marvels at how well Verdi set the language – ‘Elle ne m’aime pas’ being a perfect example; the phrase ‘Voici le jour’ is so much more evocative than ‘Già spunta il dì’. Philippe’s later ‘Tais-toi, prêtre’ is also much stronger language than ‘Non più frate’, causing Princess Eugenie to turn her back to the stage at the premiere in disgust.

[alywin]

Thank you, everyone who took the trouble to respond. I hadn't realised that one version didn't have the Fontainebleu scene: even with my limited knowledge of the opera, I can't imagine it being as effective without that. I'm aware of the difference in speech rhythms between English and French, and how that can make it very difficult producing a version in the other language, but I hadn't realised it would apply to French v. Italian as well. I just appreciate the odd opera being sung in something I can understand easily, for a change :)

[grandchant]

IMO the French text is far better, no doubt about it; but I think the problem is largely that singers know the Italian text, and this make it much easier to cast in Italian. Also, indifferently pronounced Italian still sounds OK(ish), most people who listen to opera are used to it, but indifferently pronounced French sounds shocking. I remember the La Scala recording from the eighties, with all its notrays and votrays from the chorus (instead of notre and votre); listening to it was a painful experience which seemed to get worse every time, and I ended up throwing the CDs away.

[bluestateprommer]

In light of the Metropolitan Opera HD-cast of Don Carlos two Saturdays ago (I actually caught an encore cinema relay on Wednesday night), it seems worth reviving this dormant thread. First, some reading material (as is bsp's wont):

The Met's program book pdf for the Saturday matinee: https://www.metopera.org/globalasset...don-carlos.pdf

NYT, Will Crutchfield: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/a...met-opera.html

Parterre Box, Andrew Knapp (if you really want to go OCD on the opera. But AK offers a ton of food for thought, and it's worth the read, even if you have to read it multiple times, which I kind of did):
1. https://parterre.com/2022/02/25/some...on-don-carlos/
2. https://parterre.com/2022/02/26I/mor...rlo-or-carlos/
3. https://parterre.com/2022/02/27/yet-...s-and-finales/

NYT, Zachary Woolfe (review of this production): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/a...os-review.html

The overall look of the McVicar staging reminded me of the Willy Decker stage setup, meant to mimic El Escorial, albeit in a much shabbier-looking manner. To have it present throughout was definitely visually oppressive, which might have been McVicar's point, from the video interview, but didn't make it any easier to watch. It was probably much easier to take visually in the cinema rather than the house, albeit without the quality of sound that you get in the house (especially in Family Circle).

This was my first-ever experience of Don Carlos in the original French, having never heard any recordings of the French version(s), although I've watched two videos of the Italian version(s) and seen a concert performance of the Italian version years ago in Cleveland, with FW-M conducting. Having heard it this way, I'm totally with grandchant that the French makes much, much more sense dramatically compared to the later Italian. The vocal lines sit more comfortably with the orchestra and the story-telling just feels better overall in the language that Verdi originally set. McVicar said in his video feature that Verdi spoke French "fluently", which may or may not be an exaggeration compared to some comments here, but even "awkward" is much more than zero, so this explains why the drama flows well in French. Crutchfield has this comment in his NYT article:

"Yes, the opera is better overall in French — but it is a subtle superiority. It shows up not in obvious 'gotcha' errors, but in the accumulation of many moments when the dramatic situation is precise in the original and fuzzy in the translation, where the phrases breathe naturally as Verdi wrote them and have to be rearranged or interrupted in Italian. It probably affects the singers more than the listeners, but the cumulative impact can be profound."

One mild disappointment when I walked into the movie house was to see that YN-S wasn't conducting (for all my mixed feelings about YN-S as a conductor), but rather one of the assistant conductors for this production, Patrick Furrer, who ended up conducting 3 out of the 8 performances of this run. This was obviously PF's Met HD-cast debut, so a big opportunity for him to get better known, and now a bit of his work at the Met is preserved for the video archives, and presumably the PBS television broadcast and the DVD down the line. PF did a good job (and kind of reminded me a bit of Klaus Makela in general appearance), though I can easily imagine that he let the orchestra get a bit out of hand at times and cover the singers, though the sound engineering for the HD-cast and the Saturday radio-cast obviously could deal with that on the fly).

In his review, Woolfe noted that for 2022-2023:

"There is a case to be made for doing the opera in Italian, as it will be when this staging is revived next season. But that revival will also revert, for the first time since the early 1970s, to the four-act version, a dismal decision that the Met should reconsider."

[Ein Heldenleben]

The Met Don Carlos should be on iPlayer/ sounds . It’s very well sung I think. There’s a few comments about it on the New Met Season thread.

[kernelbogey]

The Met Don Carlos should be on iPlayer/ sounds . It’s very well sung I think. There’s a few comments about it on the New Met Season thread.

Here: http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...873#post878873