Arts & Events

SF Opera Offers a Riveting DON CARLO

By James Roy MacBean
Friday June 17, 2016 - 05:02:00 PM

Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo, based on a play by German writer Friedrich Schiller, brought out some of the finest work of the mature Verdi. Involving himself thoroughly in all aspects of the creation of this opera, from working on the libretto with his two French librettists, Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle, to overseeing the production at the première in Paris’s Palais Garnier in 1867, Verdi threw himself with zeal and dedication into Don Carlo (or, as it was called in its original French-language production, Don Carlos). Verdi continued working on this opera, super-vising its translation into Italian and offering several revised versions of it in Italian. Our current San Francisco Opera production, which opened Sunday, June 12, uses the 1886 Modena version in Italian. -more-