Don Carlo (Kaufmann/Harteros/Hampson/Salminen)

[cahn]

4/5. I bought this basically on the strength of seeing Kaufmann talk about his thoughts on Carlo on YouTube, and also the auto-da-fe scene shown in this link (at around 13:40) where Hampson's Rodrigo is all but trying to telepathically yell to Carlo DON'T DO IT!! And it is great, although I definitely imprinted really heavily on the Met 2011 Alagna/Poplavskaya/Keenlyside/Furlanetto so that it took me a while to warm to it sometimes.

Kaufmann and Hampson as Carlo and Rodrigo are both brilliant and they are brilliant actors and singers. They also play the Carlo/Rodrigo friendship as extremely, er, hands-on, though with plausible deniability -- no specific moment where the slashy subtext becomes relatively explicit as it was in Keenlyside's Met 2011 Rodrigo -- but, I mean, on the other hand, Rodrigo literally dies in Carlo's arms, you know? There's at the same time also definitely a distinct vibe of Hampson being older and taller, and thus also having a mentor/big-brother cast to him -- and Hampson's Rodrigo is a very intelligent one; you can always see him thinking really hard about all the events unfolding in front of him.

Now Rodrigo/Philip has a lot more, umm, subtext to it in this production. In Keenlyside/Furlanetto's scene, there wasn't any hint of it anything but a straightforward and imo extremely powerful lord/vassal relationship, whereas in this one, Salminen keeps touching Hampson during this scene -- I mean, just on the shoulder and such, but whenever he does, Hampson makes the most hilariously unsettled faces of "Help, does the Spanish Court have HR I can talk to?" (It is particularly hilarious because he and Kaufmann are way more touchy with each other.) ...This scene maay have made me ship it in an extremely dubcon kind of way. (Well, not completely, because poor Elisabetta -- I love Elisabetta a lot and can't deal with the idea of Posa betraying her -- but I could kinda imagine it where none of the characters really consider it infidelity and Elisabetta feels a kinship for Rodrigo rather than betrayed by him.)

(One thing I adored about the staging was that in the auto-da-fe scene, Hampson and Harteros say their asides to each other (rather than being separated and both just kind of saying them as spoken thoughts, as in Met 2011) -- one of these is visible at the above link. I just really love the thought of the Rodrigo and Elisabetta relationship, how they're both united in their dedication to Carlos and in general just being the awesome people in this opera. <3 )

Speaking of Elisabetta, Harteros was great, although with a tendency to sharp, although I did get imprinted by Poplavskaya's very strong Elisabetta so it took me a while to realize that Harteros was intentionally playing it a bit more emotionally and that both of these are consistent with the libretto :) (Schiller's Elisabeth is also stronger than opera!Elisabeth, which is also affecting my opinions on this.)

Salminen in general did not strike me as nearly as powerful as Furlanetto, although he did get to sing the Lachrymosa with Kaufmann after Rodrigo's death, which is phenomenal and amazing and I feel that all peformances should have this! (I guess it's based on reconstruction of different versions and isn't really in most scores?) I would totally trade the Fontainbleu Act I for this :) I have a lot of feelings about the Rodrigo&Filippo relationship anyway, which this just served to sharpen :)

Comments

[zdenka]

Oh man, I am having so many feelings about Hampson's Rodrigo now. (Thanks again for lending me that performance!) I was familiar with Hampson from voice recordings but I hadn't seen him before as an actor, and he's really great. I think you mentioned before in the comments how he's always acting with his facial expressions (and he's always, always in the scene reacting to something).

I respect Kaufmann as a performer and I can see that he's doing something intentional with Carlo, but I don't like what he's doing! His Carlos was just distractingly twitchy all the time, and pretty immature until the very last scene. The way that performance staged the first Elisabeth-Carlo duet also really didn't work for me, the way they seemed almost afraid to touch each other. And it gave a weird effect that Carlo was so skittish with Elisabeth and so grabby with Rodrigo. But I loved pretty much everything to do with Rodrigo and Philip, and I also liked Harteros's Elisabeth a lot. Including the Lachrymosa section is great, and I also really liked the moment you mentioned when Rodrigo and Elisabeth speak their asides to each other. (Oh, and I'm used to a more courtly/less soldierly Rodrigo, though I like both interpretations, but I really loved it when he pulled his dagger out of his boot during the confrontation with Eboli.)

If you have feelings about the whole Rodrigo-Philip relationship, I think you should listen to the original French version of their duet also. I like the revised version better musically and dramatically, especially at the ending, but the first version is much more openly political and gives Rodrigo the chance to express more of his philosophy to Philip, and I find it really interesting. It's just thrilling to me when Rodrigo declares, "Dieu vous dicte sa volonté . . . donnez à vos enfants la Liberté!" (I'm not sure how I feel about Philip calling Rodrigo "enfant," though!)

Here's a recording with Hampson and Samuel Ramey:
https://youtu.be/Guy68GFNOkQ

And here's the text/translation:
https://opera-cat.dreamwidth.org/15085.html

[iberiandoctor]

Aaaaa, all of this, and I signed up for raremaleslashex so I could ask for Don Carlo fic. Yeah, I got it bad ;)

[alcanis_ivennil]

Oh, this production :D So much touching and hugging with Carlos and Rodrigo... especially in the death scene. Hampson is a fantastic Rodrigo.

Salminen, while very powerful, is not a perfect fit for Philip - vocally, he's more of a Grand Inquisitor. But in the right role - like Hagen - he's absolutely amazing!