Pretty good, finally. The arc of the evening, after the delayed start, went from Ok to, finally, very good, both from a singing and, mostly, staging point of view.
The essential set was a series of white steps ascending from the front to the back (although in the opening Fontainebleau scene there was a large gauze tent-like structure with projections on that, not very effectively and with some clumsy lighting, attempted to suggest the forest. At times this set made rapid exits by the chorus a little awkward.
Then problem with this set is that it was not at all atmospheric and one never had a strong locational sense and so everything depended on the individual performers – of which more later. However, in Part 2 (only one interval so an evening of almost Wagnerian proportions), there was one scene where, by clever lighting, the appearance of the steps was radically changed by lighting and projections and an almost Expressionist mood was, very effectively, created – a pity this was not used more I feel.
The chorus (and orchestra), were characteristically excellent and the Verdi ‘line’ was very finely done by all – it had an authentic and passionate feel to it. However, they, and a lot of the cast were, I felt, not given nearly enough, or much effective direction with the result that, for the individual singers, they too often just ‘parked and barked’. And there were really only a couple of singers who clearly had some innate acting ability, notably Erika Gal as a very fine Eboli who hit the ball out of the park with her climactic ‘O Don Fatale’, for whom lack of detailed direction was not an issue. The other ones were the King and the Grand Inquisitor but again, for both of these, stillness and a superb voice are the essential prerequisites of the roles and Geza Gabor (Inquisitor) and Andras Palerdi (Phillip II) more than had these. The latter’s lament at the opening of Act 4 was superb.
This lack of direction was at its most apparent in the dreadful second scene in the work where the chorus, in incredibly garish floral(?) print long robes, had clearly not been given much direction, other than ‘all wave your hands around individually like this’ which looked very silly, was clearly found so by some of the chorus who did this awkwardly and the exit with them having, inexplicably, taken off the long garishly-coloured robes, and then just awkwardly holding/waving them. At times this scene looked like a group of middle-aged people doing what they thought they should at a rave…‘put your hands in the air’…Dreadful; and a bad start to the evening.
Csaba Szegedi (Posa) was impressive almost from the very outset – like others he took a bit of time to inhabit the role but largely effectively conveyed conflicted loyalties well, in terms of acting, and very well indeed (in terms of singing) with a warm resonance and fine lines in all that he did. For Don C (Carlo Ventre) and Elizabetta (Zsuzsanna Adam)they both took their time to fully warm up; at the start their tones were a little pinched and the upper notes, particularly for Ventre, were rather forced. But by the end they were winging with lovely unforced and stylish lyricism. Dramatically however, they were two who really suffered from a lack of helpful direction, neither being naturally effective actors – and Adam had a very annoying mannerism, particularly in the first part, of constantly touching first one side, then the other of her centrally parted hair! Clearly no-ne bothered to tell her this! And it also struck me that, at the start, the characters are not the most engaging or endearing, spending an awful lot of time moping about their hard lot in life.
Charles V was a pretty constant figure throughout (only made clear later on who he was), engaged in the rather heavy-handedly symbolic Sisyphean task of rolling a vast ball of books up the steps with it periodically falling back down. But killing Don Carlos at the end…?
Books were also a feature of the rightly grimly nasty staging of the auto da fe with young radicals/students, having these taken from them and burned and the students then lying down at the very front of the stage, heads to the audience in preparation for their end – in this case tongues were quite graphically cut out which, I sensed the audience did not like much (not that you should like that of course, but…). And with their shoes being taken off and put in a row on the stage, a local allusion was quite effectively made. In this scene, as with others, the Inquisition were central, being portrayed as completely black-leather-clad fetish-style dogs, complete with full mask. Initially these seemed ridiculous but their use was judicious and, finally, effective. But it surely does not make sense for the Heavenly Voice to actually appear at the end of the scene – and the religious aspect was not emphasised either in this production.
But finally, this was a pretty impressive evening, ending far more strongly than it began.