Verdi - Don Carlos ('rehearsal' score, in French) at the Paris Opera Bastille

ONP Bastille, Paris, Wednesday April 9, 2025

Conductor: Simone Young. Production: Krzysztof Warlikowski. Sets and costumes: Małgorzata Szczęśniak. Lighting: Felice Ross. Video: Denis Guéguin. Choreography: Claude Bardouil. Don Carlos: Charles Castronovo. Elisabeth de Valois: Marina Rebeka. Philippe II: Christian Van Horn. La Princesse Eboli: Ekaterina Gubanova. Rodrigue: Andrzej Filończyk. Le Grand Inquisiteur: Alexander Tsymbalyuk. Un Moine: Sava Vemić. Thibault: Marine Chagnon. Une voix d’en haut: Teona Todua. Le Comte de Lerme: Manase Latu. Un héraut royal: Hyun-Jong Roh. Un coryphée: Christian Rodrigue Moungoungou. Six députés flamands: Amin Ahangaran, Niall Anderson, Alejandro Baliñas Vieites, Vartan Gabrielian, Florent Mbia, Milan Perišić. Charles Quint: Yann Collette. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

Photos: Franck Ferville/ONP

This is the third time I’ve seen this Warlikowski production. I saw it first as Don Carlos, in 2017, starring Kaufmann, Yoncheva, Tézier and Garanča, then again as Don Carlo, in 2019, with Fabiano, Car, Dupuis and Rachvelishvili. But any chance to hear Verdi’s score in the French version, nearly complete (including that magnificent ‘Lacrimosa’ ensemble after Posa’s sacrifice), is to be jumped at with almost any cast. So I jumped.

I described the production in full, as well as I could after one sitting, in my 2017 post about the French version, and added a paragraph more about it again in 2019, when I heard it in Italian and, to my surprise and for whatever reason, found the performance dramatically more satisfactory. It was probably because Fabio Luisi, not Philippe Jordan, was in the pit: ‘The result is more dramatic overall, and theatrically more coherent and convincing, making better sense of Warlikowski's characteristically thoughtful production.’

This year, it seemed to me the production had matured, if such can be said, into something thoroughly sound and deeply satisfying: a genuine repertory production. When it’s played complete, all the personal and political implications and issues of Don Carlos are laid out in full, making the whole experience (‘plot’ seems too unambitious a word) easier to apprehend and deeper, richer, more complex in substance. And Warlikowski tells it fairly straightforwardly, though of course - as an intelligent, thoughtful director - with his own slants, insights and nuances. Anyway, just follow the links above to see, if you haven’t already, how the show unfolds.

As for the score, as far as I know, this year Simone Young used the same one as Jordan in 2017: what’s called the ‘rehearsal’ score, i.e. everything Verdi originally submitted to ‘La Grande Boutique’ before any cuts were made, except the ballets. Performances thus start at 6 pm (tough on people with regular jobs) and you’re out to dine shortly before 11.

In sum, this was a good evening all round, musically and theatrically. No doubt one of the best of my current season. But however good a performance is, we all have thoughts and impressions going through our minds as we sit there. I’ll outline a few of mine, but they are in no way meant to detract from the impact of the evening overall: we left the house unusually happy.

Simone Young has, I see, quite a lot of fans online, wishing she were invited to conduct in Paris more often. Some of them would no doubt like her to get the music director job vacant since Dudamel quit Paris so suddenly and unexpectedly. My only experience of her work before now, was in Salome in 2022, and my thoughts last Wednesday evening match those I set down three years ago: her conducting ‘was detailed and respectful (...), but to me rather plain and dull and dutiful, never letting rip in torrents of either joy or horror, never stretching the orchestra to its limits - far from it.’ She’s visibly attentive to her players and singers and is no doubt a safe pair of hands: the performance goes by without undue incident. And there’s perhaps some merit in a consistently moderate approach, more dutiful and diligent than dazzling, that avoids mannerisms, eccentricities, and yanking the score about. But the result brings us nothing new, no surprises, no intriguing insights, and little relief. Moments of high drama, where you expect to be moved, shocked or thrilled, lack… well, high drama. Everything passes by at the same temperature (‘oddly placid’ were the words I used of that Salome). Which is why I mention Young’s conducting first: I think she could have goaded the singers on more at key points in the score and chivvied them into delivering more dramatic oomph to these highlights.

The chorus was in peak form: this is the kind of work that finds them at their best. The supporting roles were well filled too, contributing to the overall sense of an evening with unusually few weaknesses. As Thibault, Marine Chagnon, though agreeable, was only partially audible. But Sava Vemić’s resonant monk, Manase Latu’s Comte de Lerme and the Héraut Royal of Hyun-Jong Roh all made their mark. Their French was comprehensible, too, making them the exceptions in an evening of fuzzy articulation and exotic pronunciation (none of the principals was French) - not to mention occasional memory lapses when you suspected what you were hearing was simply gobbledegook or rhubarb-rhubarb, made up on the spot.

In 2017, when this production was new, the Polish baritone Andrzej Filończyk was one of the Flemish deputies. Now he’s been promoted to Posa. His voice is youthful, healthy and clear, firm as a laser beam, perhaps a touch dry and lacking in variation in colour. It will be interesting to see how he develops with age and experience. Unfortunately for him, many in the audience must still have had memories of Ludovic Tézier in mind: however odious comparison may be, it’s hard to avoid. 'Ah, je meurs, l'âme joyeuse’ was inevitably not the same with Filończyk and Castronovo as with Tézier and Kaufmann.

Alexander Tsymbalyuk, a Ukrainian bass, was new to me. There was something of the curate’s egg about his singing: some really great notes, especially in the middle range, yet sometimes an oddly fleshless, breathless sound. And though he’s labelled a bass, when he made his octave drop on ‘sire’, the bottom just fell out. I suppose that’s par for the course, though. At any rate, his Inquisitor could have been a lot blacker; there wasn’t enough contrast with Christian Van Horn’s Philip or enough flesh-creeping menace in their clash, which ought to build up to something terrifying, but didn't.

Van Horn is a singer I’d only heard once before, as Narbal. I like his voice very much, a kind of butterscotch sound (work that one out!), clear yet complex and sonorous. I did wonder, though, whether Philip is really a logical role for him at this stage. Philip complains of old age, of his white hair, but Van Horn, fit and luxuriantly bearded, looks very much like King George V in the absolute pink, around the time of his coronation. You wouldn’t be surprised if, in the end, Elisabeth was quite easily reconciled to her fate. He made such an elegant success of ‘Elle ne m’aime pas’, and I liked his voice so much in general that I hesitate to mention it, but it’s something I seem to end up writing in every post, whatever the opera and whoever the baritone, bass baritone or bass: his lowest notes were weak. Perhaps they should all be sent off to a special school for special courses to beef up their bottoms.

Ekaterina Gubanova is, in contrast, a singer I’ve seen so many times, in so many guises - from Third Lady, Emilia and Suzuki, through Judith and Fricka, to Ortrud and, last year, a powerfully-sung (i.e. not screeched and caterwauled) Herodias, having a ball - that I seriously wondered if there weren’t more than one mezzo with the same name. Hers isn’t an altogether typical Eboli: not a plummy, potentially hammy monstre sacré, milking it for all it’s worth, at any rate. Like Van Horn’s Philip, her Eboli is clearer than usual, and this clarity, along with her directness and precision, made the ‘Veil Song’ less tedious a set-piece than it can turn out to be. Oddly, in the third act, she seemed less self-assured and somehow fuzzier, and though, later still, ‘O don fatal’ was loudly applauded, it wasn’t the mezzo showpiece it usually is, and didn’t have the audience going wild and cheering to the rafters.

I’ve seen Charles Castronovo several times, but in recent years he’d slipped off my radar. When I first saw him, as Nemorino, getting on for 20 years ago, I wrote he was ‘the revelation of this show,’ with a ‘rounder, darker’ voice than that of Juan Diego Flórez. Now, some of the early reviewers of this run have claimed that Castronovo’s voice failed to penetrate beyond the footlights into the Bastille. Perhaps that was so at the premiere, when the critics were invited, but it wasn’t the case on Wednesday, at all. However, his voice, rather than having obvious squillo, as it’s called, is now quite a ‘dark’ tenor, à la Kaufmann (though less powerful), soft and and smoky at the top. As such, it isn’t well suited to the Bastille’s famously challenging acoustics. It might have been more comfortable for Castronovo to take Carlos on at a less demanding venue: while not the weak link some accounts have postulated, he seemed pushed to his limit most of the evening. Also, while Kaufmann broods and Fabiano seethes naturally, each in his different way suiting Warlikowski’s vision of Carlos as tortured and suicidal, Castronovo is, even at 50, more a little boy lost. There's no way he’s going to dash off and save Flanders.

Disrupting the usual protocol, I really had to leave Marina Rebeka till last. I’d heard and read a lot about her but never seen her before, one reason I bought tickets to see this production again. As Elisabeth, she was simply sensational, vocally and dramatically. It was obvious from the very first notes: early on, my neighbour leaned to me and whispered, with audible satisfaction, ‘C'est une vraie voix.’ Her voice is gleaming and crystalline, with a powerful flash of the dramatic soprano we don’t always get in this role, and some metal at the top. As such, a perfect soprano voice for the Bastille, soaring over the stage apron and pit into the vast auditorium in a way Parisians witness only too rarely. Her icily regal bearing suits the daughter of Henri II and Catherine de Medici, radiating a firm sense of her status and the duties it involves.

She was clearly a notch above everyone else in the cast, even Van Horn, which is why I saved her till last. And I agree with an online critic who wrote that if she can just give us one or two floated pianissimi, Caballé-style but without overdoing it, she may well be the Elisabeth of the present day. I hope I’ll have the good fortune of seeing her again soon, in Paris or elsewhere.