Don Carlo
This past Saturday I took an early bus from Providence to New York for the Metropolitan Opera matinée performance of Verdi's Don Carlo. I arrived ticketless for the sold-out performance, but there were some stray singles at the box office, one at $125, one standing room ticket at $15. "I'll take the standing room," I told the seller. Quite happy, I scurried off to the antipasto bar at Fiorello's for a nice lunch of octopus salad, seppie, squid salad, shrimp, potato pie, chard, sausage and peppers. That was $23.95. The glass of seltzer water was $4.95. Back across the street at Lincoln Center a horde of desperate folks had signs demonstrating their need for Don Carlo tickets.
Giuseppe Verdi's massive and sprawling 5-act opus is a work that encompasses French and Spanish history, a liberation movement of the Flemish people, political intrigue, doomed love, the Inquisition, the burning of heretics in a wrenching auto-da-fé in act three. Both musically and dramatically, the opera has the power to grip the spectator and not let go, and its themes of political and religious extremism have startling contemporary resonance.
I hadn't seen Don Carlo in decades, though I have numerous recordings of what ranks as one of Giuseppe Verdi's greatest achievements. I once took students to see it. It is not frequently offered because it requires an assembly of a large virtuoso group of soloists. Great justice was done here, with a stellar cast that included Patricia Racette as Elisabetta, Johan Botha as Don Carlo, Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Rodrigo, Olga Borodina as Eboli, René Pape as Philip II, Samuel Ramey as the Grand Inquisitor. Verdi champion James Levine conducted, extracting the monumentality of the musical drama with unfailing mastery. After the second intermission I found a seat, but standing had been no penance. Standing for Don Carlo was the finest Christmas gift I could have given myself. The performance ran from 1 to 6 PM. I was back home and in bed around midnight, digesting octopus and Verdi.
(Cross-posted to queeroperapunks and opera)