yes, i have a problem
Jul. 17th, 2018 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn(I still have the Villazón Don Carlo to write up, is the really sad thing! gah.)
I watched this deliciously regietheater version of Don Carlos which is the French, super-long 4-hour unabridged first version!! French subtitles with Kaufmann as Carlos, Yoncheva as Élisabeth, Garanča as Eboli, Tézier as Posa, Abdrazakov as Philippe. It appears to take place in the 1950s?? It would so not be a good first Don Carlos (and tbh I wish I'd been able to see a more conventional French version first) but I enjoyed it a lot. (zdenka, I can't imagine you want to watch this one, but you might want to listen to it, because the singers are great, and also unrevised first version!! But the actual staging would probably appall you.)
First, some thoughts on the French version:
-Being the unrevised version, there is a signficant amount of music that deviates at least a little bit from the generally performed version, and I loved this because it was like getting a really great opera fanfic (fanmusic?) -- by which I mean, I already knew and loved the characters, and just some of the music was different.
-zdenka, I think I am coming around to the conclusion that the French version IS better :P (Not just based on this; afterwards I went and listened to the Abbado (revised) French recording on Spotify.) There are quite a few places where the Italian and French texts differ minorly in emphasis (I assume just due to the vagaries of translation and getting everything to rhyme), and I go back and forth on whether I prefer the French version. But more to the point, the French seems to flow with the music and orchestration in a subtle and amazing way. I'm not entirely sure if I'm noticing this due to the (uniformly wonderful) performers -- but it's not like I haven't seen wonderful singers in the Italian version, and it has a different feel to it, like Italian has more of a clarity to it and the French has more of a flow, if that makes any sense.
-omg, this DOES pass Bechdel -- a gorgeous, heartbreaking duet between Elisabeth and Eboli after Eboli confesses she took the jewelry box that I didn't even know was there. ("J'ai tout compris" -- about Eboli and what she did, and Elisabeth's response to it, forgiving her). It makes dramatic sense to cut it, as the next bit is Eboli going, "Well, actually, there's this other thing!" which Elisabeth can't actually forgive her for, which undercuts the entire point of the duet, but I am happy to have heard it, and Yoncheva and Garanca, my heart. And it's a wonderful moment of characterization for the two of them, especially for Elisabeth.
-I will always be here for the Lacrymosa duet after Rodrigue's death. Always. Apart from the awesomeness of the music and the tenor-bass duet (which when Kaufmann sings it sounds more like a baritone-bass duet anyway), which would be enough to sell it to me, I just have All The Feels about Carlos and Philippe mourning their beloved Posa, divided in so many ways but united in their love for him. <3
-And, okay, my French is muuuuch better than my Italian, so I appreciated that I could actually mostly understand it with French subtitles -- it's really nice having the words that are being sung match the words in my head.
Thoughts on this regie production:
...I saw this at just the right time, afterselenak showed me all these trailers of regie Schiller Don Carlos (which I am still SUPER wanting to see, whyyyyy is it so hard to find one?) So I was actually craving a regie Don Carlos of some sort. (Though some of it, like the giant movie screen sometimes showing the characters, sometimes just showing weird crap -- in the auto-da-fe scene, is that supposed to be Dante's Satan chowing down on the traitors against God -- oh, haha, yes, very good, I see what you're trying to do there, but still, isn't that a little too much?)
Kaufmann has been given free rein to play Carlos as closer to the real Don Carlos, which means that he is visibly mentally not... all there from the very beginning, where he has bloody bandages on his wrists. In fact, the entire Fontainebleu scene appears to me to be Carlos' dream or possibly hallucination. (Elisabeth comes in the rear of the stage wearing a wedding gown, presumably on her way to marry Philippe (there's also the adoring crowd and various dignitaries), with Carlos in casual clothing at the front of the stage -- and when they have their duets together the lighting on the rear stage dims, the other people all disappear, and Elisabeth steps to the front of the stage.) This is an interesting choice -- that Elisabeth isn't actually in love with him at all! -- and I wasn't sure they could support this in the rest of the opera. In fact if you take the first act as a hallucination, it does turn out that with the unrevised French version (which appears to me to give Elisabeth a little more deniability) you can play the rest of it so it more-or-less works. Posa says half of his speech ("L'Infant Carlos... qui sur la terre serait plus digne d'être aimé?" Who on the earth would be more worthy of being loved?) in Act III to Eboli, not to Elisabeth -- I got the distinct impression that he thought Carlos getting laid would solve a lot of his problems (...quite possibly true), and figured Eboli was the best bet. (Poor Posa. "Poor Posa" is a recurring theme in this production.) This version has Elisabeth saying to the King, instead of "Or v'appartengo, a Dio sommessa, Ma immacolata qual giglio io son" (Now I belong to you, submissive to God; I am as immaculate as the lily!) she says "J'ai pour Carlos un coeur de mere. Si Dieu daigne m'entendre, un jour l'Infant trouvera chez son pere plus de justice et plus d'amour!" (I have for Carlos the heart of a mother. If God deigns to hear me, one day the Prince will find from his father more justice and more love!)
The last act is therefore super interesting, because I think there's supposed to be an interpretive ambiguity there. There's the Verdi intention, in which Carlos and Elisabeth are desperately in love; and there's another interpretation superimposed on top, in which Carlos is crazy and delusional about Elisabeth, who is fond of him as a stepmother but who mostly is realizing everything is falling apart. (In both interpretations Philippe thinks they're in love -- you can't finesse that at all from the libretto -- but his character is increasingly unhinged.) I could honestly not tell which interpretation is the correct one in the last act, and I think that was extremely intentional. They never kiss (and Yoncheva is often moving away from Kaufmann), except at the end of their duet when Philip comes in and all is lost, she kisses him on the forehead in a rather maternal sort of move. But on the other hand gosh they sure have a lot of chemistry for people who aren't desperately in love, and Yoncheva does touch him a little more than one would expect from a fully stepmother-stepson relationship. Basically Kaufmann and Yoncheva are both super totally awesome for being able to sell both interpretations at the same time to me, I wouldn't have thought that was possible.
Hmm, and also it's interesting that Yoncheva plays Elisabeth as not at all surprised when Philip comes in. She doesn't turn a hair, like she's expecting it, and her response to it is to very coolly take out her vial of poison (which she brought out during her Act V aria, when she was singing about how there is no more for her but death) and drink it. There's an interpretation here where she knows Philip is totally out of control, and with Posa gone there's no one to even slow him down, and the Prince is crazy and delusional and probably going to go off to a mental institution if Philippe doesn't kill him first, and this whole sending Carlos off to Flanders thing is a delusion that she enters into so as to make Carlos feel better, knowing all the while that it's a pipe dream. I'm not saying that is the interpretation, necessarily, but I do feel that the production consciously raises the possibility of that interpretation, even if it just flirts with it rather than making the choice to stage it unambiguously.
Posa: I feel (although Keenlyside has totally messed up my ability to tell) that this Posa is a courtier, not at all a soldier (although he handles a foil briefly to show he can in the "Restez!" scene, which I loved), updated to the 1950's. He's deferential to though not afraid of both Carlos and Philippe. Now, it's not entirely clear why Posa believes in Kaufmann's Carlos. My headcanon is that Carlos wasn't always quite so messed up, and Posa sees him as he was rather than who he is now.
This Posa, omg, he really has his hands full, what with his friend not-so-slowly cracking up and his King falling down drunk (which he does in the runup to the auto-da-fe scene; they're going out of their way to show that Carlos and Philippe have All The Problems). He's got this look on his face in the auto-da-fe scene where he's like, "I really, really hope nothing goes terribly wrong." (Poor Posa.) There are some odd choices for his character, like, during the Flanders' emissary speech (during the auto-da-fe scene) Posa randomly decides to smoke a cigarette, which I guess?? is maybe because he's stressed that everything is starting to fall apart, but then he keeps smoking it once Carlos pulls out the sword?? And he pulls out a flask to drink during the Eboli-Carlos-Rodrigue trio?? It's weird. Everyone's falling apart, I guess.
Now, I was charmed that the director of this version totally subscribes to allllll my Rodrigue & Elisabeth headcanon. Posa was always there for Elisabeth when Philippe did terrible things to her, catching her before she falls after Philippe dismisses Aremberg and helping her up in the quartet scene. THANK YOU POSA. And the way it's staged it seems to me that this Posa makes his decision on using Carlos' papers because he's so shocked by what Philippe did to Elisabeth (in this production, he comes in before Philippe calls for help and sees him trying to strangle her). (In the other productions I've seen, Rodrigo doesn't come in until after the call for help, and also is looking around and may have found other evidence that Filippo is moving towards killing Carlo.)
It's interesting, especially after seeing the super-touchy Met/ROH and Salzburg traditional productions, how little anyone touches in this production, clearly by design. And more than that, a lot of the times the characters are singing while separated by a lot of space. Rodrigue and Philippe hardly ever touch. And in particular, Carlos and Rodrigue have their embraces when designated by the sung text, but that's it -- no emotional embrace after Carlos gives Rodrigue the letters. In fact, when Rodrigue dies, Carlos is in this prison cage and so Rodrigue is singing, "Carlos! Ta main!" and reaching out to him, but Carlos can't get out of the cage and he never gets Carlos' hand and it is totally heartbreaking. Oh Posa :((((( It was interesting to see once, but boy am I glad that most productions don't do that because oh, my heart.
Eboli, now, in this production Eboli instead of Rodrigue is the, er, opera bicycle, in the sense that the director is clearly trying (and succeeding) to ship her with everyone else in the opera. I mean, canonically she's in love with Carlos and getting it on with Philippe (and they're even shown together in Philippe's big aria -- not touching, as par the course, but it's clear what just happened), and also subtextually attached to Elisabeth, and then Eboli and Rodrigue are totally and massively flirting in their scene together, and then Eboli is also randomly flirting with Aremberg... Elina Garanca is an Eboli who can handle all of this, convincingly. She was really very good.
The end result of all of this is a Don Carlos that plays up the tragedy of characters who are alone in their own conceptions of the world: who can't really connect with each other and who they really are. Philippe can't connect with the reality of Elisabeth or Rodrigue; Rodrigue doesn't connect with the reality of Philippe or of Carlos; Carlos doesn't connect with the reality of... a lot of things. Eboli can't connect with Carlos, and by her own actions cuts herself off from connecting with Elisabeth, who turns out to be the only person she in the end wanted to connect with. Elisabeth may in fact see things as they are, but is powerless to escape from all of this. (I tell you, I have never rooted so hard for Elisabeth and Eboli to escape together.) It's interesting to me, and I enjoyed seeing this different take on things -- my own conception of the opera, and why I love it so much, is that it's about very strong relationships, and how the very strength of opposing relationships tears it up into tragedy: Rodrigo/Carlo vs. Rodrigo/Filippo; Elisabeth/Carlo vs. Elisabeth/Filippo; Carlo/Filippo vs. all the rest of these; Eboli/Carlo vs. Eboli/Filippo... it's the very strength of all those relationships that drives the opera for me, and so it was interesting to see a take on it that focused on something so utterly different. But I certainly wouldn't have fallen in desperate love with this one. And now I'm gonna go watch Keenlyside's Posa give Carlo a huge hug :)
I watched this deliciously regietheater version of Don Carlos which is the French, super-long 4-hour unabridged first version!! French subtitles with Kaufmann as Carlos, Yoncheva as Élisabeth, Garanča as Eboli, Tézier as Posa, Abdrazakov as Philippe. It appears to take place in the 1950s?? It would so not be a good first Don Carlos (and tbh I wish I'd been able to see a more conventional French version first) but I enjoyed it a lot. (
zdenka, I can't imagine you want to watch this one, but you might want to listen to it, because the singers are great, and also unrevised first version!! But the actual staging would probably appall you.)First, some thoughts on the French version:
-Being the unrevised version, there is a signficant amount of music that deviates at least a little bit from the generally performed version, and I loved this because it was like getting a really great opera fanfic (fanmusic?) -- by which I mean, I already knew and loved the characters, and just some of the music was different.
-
zdenka, I think I am coming around to the conclusion that the French version IS better :P (Not just based on this; afterwards I went and listened to the Abbado (revised) French recording on Spotify.) There are quite a few places where the Italian and French texts differ minorly in emphasis (I assume just due to the vagaries of translation and getting everything to rhyme), and I go back and forth on whether I prefer the French version. But more to the point, the French seems to flow with the music and orchestration in a subtle and amazing way. I'm not entirely sure if I'm noticing this due to the (uniformly wonderful) performers -- but it's not like I haven't seen wonderful singers in the Italian version, and it has a different feel to it, like Italian has more of a clarity to it and the French has more of a flow, if that makes any sense.-omg, this DOES pass Bechdel -- a gorgeous, heartbreaking duet between Elisabeth and Eboli after Eboli confesses she took the jewelry box that I didn't even know was there. ("J'ai tout compris" -- about Eboli and what she did, and Elisabeth's response to it, forgiving her). It makes dramatic sense to cut it, as the next bit is Eboli going, "Well, actually, there's this other thing!" which Elisabeth can't actually forgive her for, which undercuts the entire point of the duet, but I am happy to have heard it, and Yoncheva and Garanca, my heart. And it's a wonderful moment of characterization for the two of them, especially for Elisabeth.
-I will always be here for the Lacrymosa duet after Rodrigue's death. Always. Apart from the awesomeness of the music and the tenor-bass duet (which when Kaufmann sings it sounds more like a baritone-bass duet anyway), which would be enough to sell it to me, I just have All The Feels about Carlos and Philippe mourning their beloved Posa, divided in so many ways but united in their love for him. <3
-And, okay, my French is muuuuch better than my Italian, so I appreciated that I could actually mostly understand it with French subtitles -- it's really nice having the words that are being sung match the words in my head.
Thoughts on this regie production:
...I saw this at just the right time, after
selenak showed me all these trailers of regie Schiller Don Carlos (which I am still SUPER wanting to see, whyyyyy is it so hard to find one?) So I was actually craving a regie Don Carlos of some sort. (Though some of it, like the giant movie screen sometimes showing the characters, sometimes just showing weird crap -- in the auto-da-fe scene, is that supposed to be Dante's Satan chowing down on the traitors against God -- oh, haha, yes, very good, I see what you're trying to do there, but still, isn't that a little too much?)Kaufmann has been given free rein to play Carlos as closer to the real Don Carlos, which means that he is visibly mentally not... all there from the very beginning, where he has bloody bandages on his wrists. In fact, the entire Fontainebleu scene appears to me to be Carlos' dream or possibly hallucination. (Elisabeth comes in the rear of the stage wearing a wedding gown, presumably on her way to marry Philippe (there's also the adoring crowd and various dignitaries), with Carlos in casual clothing at the front of the stage -- and when they have their duets together the lighting on the rear stage dims, the other people all disappear, and Elisabeth steps to the front of the stage.) This is an interesting choice -- that Elisabeth isn't actually in love with him at all! -- and I wasn't sure they could support this in the rest of the opera. In fact if you take the first act as a hallucination, it does turn out that with the unrevised French version (which appears to me to give Elisabeth a little more deniability) you can play the rest of it so it more-or-less works. Posa says half of his speech ("L'Infant Carlos... qui sur la terre serait plus digne d'être aimé?" Who on the earth would be more worthy of being loved?) in Act III to Eboli, not to Elisabeth -- I got the distinct impression that he thought Carlos getting laid would solve a lot of his problems (...quite possibly true), and figured Eboli was the best bet. (Poor Posa. "Poor Posa" is a recurring theme in this production.) This version has Elisabeth saying to the King, instead of "Or v'appartengo, a Dio sommessa, Ma immacolata qual giglio io son" (Now I belong to you, submissive to God; I am as immaculate as the lily!) she says "J'ai pour Carlos un coeur de mere. Si Dieu daigne m'entendre, un jour l'Infant trouvera chez son pere plus de justice et plus d'amour!" (I have for Carlos the heart of a mother. If God deigns to hear me, one day the Prince will find from his father more justice and more love!)
The last act is therefore super interesting, because I think there's supposed to be an interpretive ambiguity there. There's the Verdi intention, in which Carlos and Elisabeth are desperately in love; and there's another interpretation superimposed on top, in which Carlos is crazy and delusional about Elisabeth, who is fond of him as a stepmother but who mostly is realizing everything is falling apart. (In both interpretations Philippe thinks they're in love -- you can't finesse that at all from the libretto -- but his character is increasingly unhinged.) I could honestly not tell which interpretation is the correct one in the last act, and I think that was extremely intentional. They never kiss (and Yoncheva is often moving away from Kaufmann), except at the end of their duet when Philip comes in and all is lost, she kisses him on the forehead in a rather maternal sort of move. But on the other hand gosh they sure have a lot of chemistry for people who aren't desperately in love, and Yoncheva does touch him a little more than one would expect from a fully stepmother-stepson relationship. Basically Kaufmann and Yoncheva are both super totally awesome for being able to sell both interpretations at the same time to me, I wouldn't have thought that was possible.
Hmm, and also it's interesting that Yoncheva plays Elisabeth as not at all surprised when Philip comes in. She doesn't turn a hair, like she's expecting it, and her response to it is to very coolly take out her vial of poison (which she brought out during her Act V aria, when she was singing about how there is no more for her but death) and drink it. There's an interpretation here where she knows Philip is totally out of control, and with Posa gone there's no one to even slow him down, and the Prince is crazy and delusional and probably going to go off to a mental institution if Philippe doesn't kill him first, and this whole sending Carlos off to Flanders thing is a delusion that she enters into so as to make Carlos feel better, knowing all the while that it's a pipe dream. I'm not saying that is the interpretation, necessarily, but I do feel that the production consciously raises the possibility of that interpretation, even if it just flirts with it rather than making the choice to stage it unambiguously.
Posa: I feel (although Keenlyside has totally messed up my ability to tell) that this Posa is a courtier, not at all a soldier (although he handles a foil briefly to show he can in the "Restez!" scene, which I loved), updated to the 1950's. He's deferential to though not afraid of both Carlos and Philippe. Now, it's not entirely clear why Posa believes in Kaufmann's Carlos. My headcanon is that Carlos wasn't always quite so messed up, and Posa sees him as he was rather than who he is now.
This Posa, omg, he really has his hands full, what with his friend not-so-slowly cracking up and his King falling down drunk (which he does in the runup to the auto-da-fe scene; they're going out of their way to show that Carlos and Philippe have All The Problems). He's got this look on his face in the auto-da-fe scene where he's like, "I really, really hope nothing goes terribly wrong." (Poor Posa.) There are some odd choices for his character, like, during the Flanders' emissary speech (during the auto-da-fe scene) Posa randomly decides to smoke a cigarette, which I guess?? is maybe because he's stressed that everything is starting to fall apart, but then he keeps smoking it once Carlos pulls out the sword?? And he pulls out a flask to drink during the Eboli-Carlos-Rodrigue trio?? It's weird. Everyone's falling apart, I guess.
Now, I was charmed that the director of this version totally subscribes to allllll my Rodrigue & Elisabeth headcanon. Posa was always there for Elisabeth when Philippe did terrible things to her, catching her before she falls after Philippe dismisses Aremberg and helping her up in the quartet scene. THANK YOU POSA. And the way it's staged it seems to me that this Posa makes his decision on using Carlos' papers because he's so shocked by what Philippe did to Elisabeth (in this production, he comes in before Philippe calls for help and sees him trying to strangle her). (In the other productions I've seen, Rodrigo doesn't come in until after the call for help, and also is looking around and may have found other evidence that Filippo is moving towards killing Carlo.)
It's interesting, especially after seeing the super-touchy Met/ROH and Salzburg traditional productions, how little anyone touches in this production, clearly by design. And more than that, a lot of the times the characters are singing while separated by a lot of space. Rodrigue and Philippe hardly ever touch. And in particular, Carlos and Rodrigue have their embraces when designated by the sung text, but that's it -- no emotional embrace after Carlos gives Rodrigue the letters. In fact, when Rodrigue dies, Carlos is in this prison cage and so Rodrigue is singing, "Carlos! Ta main!" and reaching out to him, but Carlos can't get out of the cage and he never gets Carlos' hand and it is totally heartbreaking. Oh Posa :((((( It was interesting to see once, but boy am I glad that most productions don't do that because oh, my heart.
Eboli, now, in this production Eboli instead of Rodrigue is the, er, opera bicycle, in the sense that the director is clearly trying (and succeeding) to ship her with everyone else in the opera. I mean, canonically she's in love with Carlos and getting it on with Philippe (and they're even shown together in Philippe's big aria -- not touching, as par the course, but it's clear what just happened), and also subtextually attached to Elisabeth, and then Eboli and Rodrigue are totally and massively flirting in their scene together, and then Eboli is also randomly flirting with Aremberg... Elina Garanca is an Eboli who can handle all of this, convincingly. She was really very good.
The end result of all of this is a Don Carlos that plays up the tragedy of characters who are alone in their own conceptions of the world: who can't really connect with each other and who they really are. Philippe can't connect with the reality of Elisabeth or Rodrigue; Rodrigue doesn't connect with the reality of Philippe or of Carlos; Carlos doesn't connect with the reality of... a lot of things. Eboli can't connect with Carlos, and by her own actions cuts herself off from connecting with Elisabeth, who turns out to be the only person she in the end wanted to connect with. Elisabeth may in fact see things as they are, but is powerless to escape from all of this. (I tell you, I have never rooted so hard for Elisabeth and Eboli to escape together.) It's interesting to me, and I enjoyed seeing this different take on things -- my own conception of the opera, and why I love it so much, is that it's about very strong relationships, and how the very strength of opposing relationships tears it up into tragedy: Rodrigo/Carlo vs. Rodrigo/Filippo; Elisabeth/Carlo vs. Elisabeth/Filippo; Carlo/Filippo vs. all the rest of these; Eboli/Carlo vs. Eboli/Filippo... it's the very strength of all those relationships that drives the opera for me, and so it was interesting to see a take on it that focused on something so utterly different. But I certainly wouldn't have fallen in desperate love with this one. And now I'm gonna go watch Keenlyside's Posa give Carlo a huge hug :)
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Date: 2018-07-18 08:20 pm (UTC)And everyone sings so wonderfully! Tézier is probably the closest today to the golden age Verdi baritones, Jonas was born for Carlos, Garanca is one of the most exciting Ebolis I have seen, Yoncheva is an angel, and Abrazakov is already a vocally fantastic King Philip, but he needs to age into it a bit more - he's so youthful!
There is the Chatelet production of the French version, with Alagna, Hampson, Mattila, van Dam and Meier, which I remember being very good (been over a decade since I saw it). Meier especially surprised me because Eboli? a Wagner soprano? but she really got her right.
Also: if you like Jonas angsting and suffering, I'd recommend Werther, either the Met or the Paris version (the Paris one keeps it in the original period, the Met one updates to the 1890s, but it's probably the more heartbreaking one).
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Date: 2018-07-19 03:22 am (UTC)They were all amazing! Garanca, man, I am realizing that I never got excited about Eboli because all the ones I've seen (well, maybe I've just seen Smirnova multiple times?) have just been very wobbly. Kaufmann is kind of funny because I love his voice so much, and he plays these terrible or insane characters and I kind of... still totally crush on them because this gorgeous voice is coming out :) I will look up Werther! (though it will have to wait until after I get done with Verdi :) )
I haven't seen the Alagna-Hampson production but one of these days I'll probably buy it (in my quest to get all the videography Hampson ever did, lol).
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Date: 2018-07-19 08:16 pm (UTC)Also good Don Carlo: Salzburg one from about '87 with Carreras, Cappuccilli, Baltsa, and a very young Furlanetto (this was how he became a star).
I do liveblog operas a lot and Don Carlo tends to happen regularly :D
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Date: 2018-07-20 03:25 pm (UTC)I saw that last liveblog of the Munich one! I reblogged with comments, haha. (raspberryhunter on tumblr. I haven't posted since I was in Les Mis fandom lo these many years past, and I couldn't figure out how to leave a comment... I'm such a tumblr fail)
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Date: 2018-07-20 10:03 pm (UTC)Fortunately this thing is built like LJ and I used to be there when it was still active.
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Date: 2018-07-18 11:38 pm (UTC)Hee. The thing is that Verdi is so careful sometimes about musically underlining his words, that I think you're inherently going to get some loss if you sing it translated into any other language. (The recording I grew up with, oddly, translates the French libretto instead of the Italian one, although it's being sung in Italian, and so I got used to thinking of the (translated) French as the "real" version before I even knew enough French or Italian to look at the differences for myself.)
I think I would find this production really, really depressing (in addition to not liking the staging, I suspect you're right about that). If nothing else, I'm not really happy about self-injury/suicide attempts being used for shock value (what you said at the beginning about Carlo's wrists). And nooo, Rodrigo doesn't even get to take Carlo's hand? That's too cruel. :(
He should die in Carlo's arms, obviously.I think I'll take your advice and listen to, not watch this one when I have time. Or maybe arrange something to block the screen so that I can only see the French subtitles. :P I'm glad you enjoyed it, though!
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Date: 2018-07-19 03:50 am (UTC)Yes this!! Well, I didn't think hard enough about it to look at particular words, and I was not able to properly articulate this in the post, but I'd be listening to it and occasionally there would be this long line in the music that would just flow exactly like the way the sentence was sung in French; it's like the music was written for it... oh wait. :)
(The one bit where I definitely like the Italian better is Di me non ti scordar! instead of Souviens-tu! because I have way too many feelings about Rodrigo asking Carlo to remember him.)
It is a really, really depressing production, in a way that Don Carlo isn't usually depressing (as opposed to how it's always super tragic). Hm, I wouldn't say the self-injury/suicide was being used for shock value as much as a sort of shorthand to what we can expect from this Carlos (he also puts a pistol to his temple at the end, which I actually forgot to mention because it was so exactly the sort of thing one would expect him to do by then), but yes, there's no way you would like this conception of Carlos. And CLEARLY RODRIGO SHOULD DIE IN CARLO'S ARMS YES.
Ha, that's not a bad idea, I thought the French subtitles are pretty good!
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 05:21 am (UTC)Dato ho finor due Regi al regno tuo possente!
L'opra di tanti di distrugger vuoi, demente!
And there's this dramatic crashy stuff in the orchestra on "demente," "madman." It makes sense with the general tone of what he's saying, but there's no particular reason the dramatic stuff should happen on that word. But in French the lines go:
J'avais donné deux rois à ce puissant empire,
l'oeuvre de tous mes jours, vous voulez le détruire . . .
And the dramatic crashy stuff comes on the word "détruire," to destroy. :D And I know that's not the only place where that happens.
Hmm, yes, Di me non ti scordar! is a good line. And not only because it reminds me of Manrico's famous "Ah Leonora, non ti scordar di me" in Il Trovatore, which he sings to his love interest. :D
Blah. I'll stop trying to argue about whether it was used well when I haven't seen the production, but yeah, I need to not watch that. (Not as a knock against the production, but due to it being a personally sensitive subject for me.) I'll stick to the good French subtitles. :)
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Date: 2018-07-19 04:26 pm (UTC)Oh, this is AWESOME. I am always here for this kind of thing; I would totally love to hear if you remember other examples! I'll have to pay attention next time I listen and see whether I can pick out more stuff.
(aside -- I am quite fond of Verdi's dramatic crashy stuff and I also sometimes at the same time find it hilarious, like when Rodrigo has his whole "Sire, are you the only man you can't keep in check?" bit and then you get the Super Dramatic chord right afterwards -- it always makes me laugh. Why yes, Verdi, I get that you strenuously agree with Rodrigo there!)
Ahhhhh I am working my way up to Trovatore! Not there yet, but I have listened to Ballo, which I really want to see now
and also write fix-it for because augh, and halfway through listening to Forza -- omg, how miserable is this opera! beautiful, but whyyyyy is the baritone so awful, Verdi, I thought we had an agreement that baritones were supposed to be awesome!! (You did warn me! Thank you for the warning :) )It's a very weird and depressing production (and, I mean, it literally uses the image of Satan in the ninth circle of hell eating someone -- so honestly I could also just have my normal meter for shock totally out of whack right now) -- it makes total sense not to want to watch it for all kinds of reasons!
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Date: 2018-07-19 08:23 pm (UTC)Also the Rodrigo/Philip duet is so... conversational? Not as dramatic as the revised version. And they are fighting without any safety gear. I kinda imagine this is how is goes:
Philip: Come on Marquis, you could use some exercise.
Rodrigo: Sire I haven't done this for decades and also we should probably put on helmets
Philip: Look, I'm probably already drunk. Fight me.
Rodrigo: With all due respect, you are kinda a tyrant
Philip: You. I like you.
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Date: 2018-07-20 04:37 am (UTC)Not as dramatic as the revised version (and I probably like the music better in the revised version too, although it's a little hard for me to tell because I know the revised version music so much better at this point), but I love it anyway: Donnez à vos enfants la liberté! And Rodrigue is such an awesome heretic here: "puisque l'hazard... puisque Dieu..."
Lol, that's totally how it goes, plus I thought there was some "Are you actually manly enough to fight me? Huh? Are you?" And I love that Rodrigo actually turns out to be quite good at fencing :) "You are kind of a tyrant and actually I am indeed that manly. And now I'm going to stop because I'm not dumb enough to keep doing this without helmets."
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Date: 2018-07-20 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-20 04:06 pm (UTC)(in general, if it mucks with the underlying characterization and relationships -- which the Bastille Don Carlo does -- it's not going to be a good first version for me; if it keeps those intact I'm totally fine with regie if the singers are good.)
But gosh, I really want to see Kaufmann playing a really good guy!
and this way it's almost like seeing a baritone do it(And I would like to see Tezier playing a bad guy after seeing him as Posa...)no subject
Date: 2018-07-20 03:34 am (UTC)It's not quite as obvious, but in the chorus the women sing outside the cloister, Tebaldo has a line about the nightingales, and his music and the orchestra are pretty clearly imitating some bird-chirpy stuff:
Et sous l'ombrage pour vous plaire / vont s'éveiller les rossignols.
(And under the shade, to please you, the nightingales will awaken.)
And I think that's more fun than the Italian:
E sotto l'ombra aprir il volo
qui l'usignolo più lieto par.
(And under the shade, here the nightingale seems more happy to spread its flight.)
Because in Italian you're getting the bird-chirpy music on "seems more happy" instead of "the nightingales".
Or what Eboli says to Carlo in the trio:
Malheur sur toi, fils adultère,
mon cri vengeur va rententir . . .
And you can hear her cry ringing out in those lines, just like she's saying. In Italian it still works well with the meaning, but the image is less specific and vivid:
Trema per te, falso figliuolo,
la mia vendetta arriva già.
(Tremble for yourself, false son, my vengeance comes now.)
In Rodrigo's death scene:
Dieu permet encore qu'on s'aime
près de lui, quand on est au ciel.
You notice that the melody rises up on "près de lui" because he's talking about God and Heaven. And in the second half of the phrase there's a trilly bit that Verdi likes to use in talking about Heaven or for people who are about to die (I think Violetta gets something similar? I'm pretty sure Gilda does also, in her death scene. Rodrigo also gets more trilly about-to-die stuff on "Io morrò ma lieto in core").
In Italian, it's "Ci congiunga Iddio nel ciel, Ei che premia i suoi fedel'," which again is a very similar meaning but less delicate word painting -- the rising note is on "premia," "rewards," instead of "before Him/in His presence" and the trilly Heaven bit is on "his faithful" instead of "in Heaven."
(There's also a lot of great word painting in the opera which does transfer over to the Italian!)
(I agree with you on both counts, that I also love the dramatic crashy stuff and also sometimes find it hilarious. :D )
It's not a Trovatore spoiler! In case you were worried. The context is different, Manrico doesn't sing it while dying. It's just a very famous and dramatic scene. (It even shows up in the Marx Brothers movie A Night at the Opera.)
I know, why is Carlo di Vargas like that. :( Everyone would be so much happier (including him!) if he could just chill out for once. And yet. :(
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Date: 2018-07-20 05:15 am (UTC)Oh! No, I wasn't worried it was a Trovatore spoiler, it was more that I keep seeing references to Trovatore and I really want to listen to it and watch it, and I'm trying to be good and save it until at least after I watch Ballo and Forza, but we'll see :) (I will probably at least end up listening to it before then.)
Carlo di Vargas and Alvaro could be so happy
together! Alvaro gives him soooo many chances! (Alvaro may be the only tenor role I know of so far where I'm a little in love with the character?) :(no subject
Date: 2018-07-23 11:22 am (UTC)I must say it was interesting, and I was totally here for Posa & Philippe — I know they don’t get to touch much, but the times they do? Esp the fencing in vests and shirtsleeves? Hot! I agree with you, this Posa is definitely a courtier, and not a fighter, but this Philippe is totally a warrior king! — but this interpretation of Carlo/Posa and one-sided Carlo/Elisabeth didn’t really work for me; like you, I’m not sure why Rodrigue would be so into someone clearly such a basket case as this Carlo is? And the staging of the death scene with the Hannibal Lecter mesh cage, why would anyone do that?
OTOH, also like you, I was here for sexy, cigarette-smoking, draping-herself-over-all-the-furniture Eboli! And I did like the Rodrigo & Elisabeth, though I am secretly craving the version where they touch even less platonically than this ;) And I loved understanding the libretto in this French version, to say nothing about the Lacrymosa! But, yes, on balance, while I enjoyed — thank you for reviewing and recommending! As always, I can’t get enough of your thoughts and perspectives on all things opera! — I confess I wasn’t madly in love, either.
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Date: 2018-07-25 05:05 am (UTC)Oh, the fencing in shirtsleeves was wonderful and hot, I agree :D ALSO I AM NEVER GOING TO BE OVER RODRIGUE NOT GETTING CARLOS' HAND, um, I'm just saying :)
By the way, I am totally eating my words about not requesting the opera for Yuletide — I think what I said about getting picky can apply for some canons (particularly books with hard-to-pastiche styles -- which I've been writing for the past several Yuletides, which is why I was thinking in that vein), but really, for this opera I just want More Fic :) And I'll definitely ask for Rodrigo & Elisabeth because I love them both so much! (I am not nearly the shipper you are, but as you know I can see it for extremely rarified cases :) )
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Date: 2019-09-14 04:58 am (UTC)I can totally see how keeping the characters isolated in their own tragic little worlds is a very intriguing, justified interpretation and also a VERY VERY WRONG ONE after the clips you've shown me, ALL THE HUGS ALL THE TIME! :-PP
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Date: 2019-09-14 05:13 am (UTC)ALL THE HUGS I AGREE!
(I'm sure it also affects things that you're seeing this as Fritz/Katte as well. They should not be isolated tragic people, and it goes against canon anyway! They should have MORE HUGS!)
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Date: 2019-09-14 07:13 am (UTC)Plus even without the canon pairing, those clips you have shown me have been REALLY HUGGY, and extremely cute.
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Date: 2019-09-16 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-16 04:55 am (UTC)