Arts & Events

For San Francisco Opera’s performance on June 29 of Verdi’s Don Carlo, veteran bass Ferruccio Furlanetto replaced René Pape as King Philip II of Spain. Furlanetto first sang this role in 1986 at Salzburg, and I have a VHS video of that performance, which launched Furlanetto as a major interpreter of that role. Now, at age 67, Furlanetto sings just as magnificently as he did thirty years earlier. Indeed, he is generally acclaimed as the greatest Philip II of the current generation. 

In San Francisco Furlanetto lived up to his reputation, singing a powerful Philip II and endowing this character with finely nuanced complexity. Furlanetto’s voice is rich and fluid in all registers. When Philip II first appears onstage in Act II, Furlanetto stalks to center-stage using a cane, then angrily upbraids his young wife, Queen Elisabetta, for appearing unescorted. Invoking the rules of life at court, Philip then peremptorily dismisses the Queen’s Lady in Waiting, her friend from childhood, the Countess of Aremberg. Thus, it is clear from the outset that Philip is not happy in his marriage to the daughter of the King of France. Later, in Act IV, Furlanetto performed Philip’s famous aria, “ella giamai m’amo” (“She has never loved me”), in a manner that was quite different from the way René Pape performed it. Unlike Pape, who gazed forlornly at a painted portrait of his wife while singing this aria, Furlanetto never once even glanced at the portrait. Instead, he began the aria draped disconsolately over his canopied bed, which suggested that the bed itself was a fulcrum of his discontent with his wife. Moreover, by not even glancing at her portrait, Furlanetto made it clear that Philip’s image of his wife is internalized and highly subjective. This becomes clear moments later when Elisabetta rushes in and angrily reports that her jewel box has been stolen. Philip produces the jewel box and demands that Elisabetta open it. When she demurs, Philip opens it and takes out of the box a cameo portrait of his son Don Carlo. He then accuses his wife of adultery, calling her a whore. When she collapses in a faint, Philip rushes to her side and laments his rash jumping to conclusions. He realizes that his wife is blameless. 

While all the other roles aside from Philip were sung by the same cast as at the opening performance, which I reviewed in the June 17 issue, it was evident that the singers had in the interim become thoroughly relaxed and confident in their roles. Thus the quality of singing, which was already quite high in the opener, now reached an even higher and more consistent level of excellence. Soprano Ana María Martínez, who sang Elisabetta, did not hold back at the outset as on opening night in order to save her voice for the long haul and her difficult arias in Acts IV and V. Tenor Michael Fabiano as Don Carlo and baritone Marius Kwiechen as Rodrigo were again at the top of their game throughout this long opera. Bulgarian mezzo-soprano Nadia Krasteva as Eboli was even more impressive than on opening night, singing and acting a flamenco-inspired Veil song in Act II and offering a fiery “O Don fatale” in Act IV. As always in Don Carlo, the friendship between Carlo and Rodrigo carries a powerful charge of energy, perhaps even of homoerotic energy. Indeed, it is significant that in Act Iv when Rodrigo visits Carlo in prison and exults in their lifelong friendship, which inspires Rodrigo to save Carlo and die for him, the music Rodrigo sings is a variant of the very same love theme that Carlo sang at the outset of the opera when recalling his first glimpse of his betrothed Elisabetta. Erotic love, which for Carlo is directed towards Elisabetta, is directed by Rodrigo towards Carlo; and, indeed, this (homo)erotic charge seems reciprocated by Carlo. Thus, in opera already bearing a powerful charge of Oedipal conflict between father and son, as well as between step-mother and step-son, Verdi’s music and dramaturgy add a strong undercurrent of homoerotic energy. Don Carlo is truly a masterpiece of intense musical and dramatic power.