Name: Don Carlos (French version)
Start: 2023-09-15T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2023-09-28T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Grand-Théâtre

Organization

Grand Théâtre de Genève

Conductor

Marc Minkowski

Stage director

Lydia Steier

Set designer

Momme Hinrichs

Video

Costume designer

Ursula Kudrna

Lighting designer

Felice Ross

Dramaturge

Mark Schachtsiek

Chorus master

Alan Woodbridge

Tenor

Charles Castronovo

Don Carlos

Bass

Dmitry Ulyanov

Philip II

Soprano

Rachel Willis-Sørensen

Elizabeth of Valois

Baritone

Stéphane Degout

Marquis of Posa

Mezzo-soprano

Eve-Maud Hubeaux

Princess Eboli

Liang Li

The Grand Inquisitor

Ena Pongrac

Thibault

William Meinert

A monk

Julien Henric

The Count of Lerma

Giulia Bolcato

Heavenly Voice

Singer

Raphael Hardmeyer

Flemish Envoys

Benjamin Molonfalean

Joe Bertili

Edwin Kaye

Marc Mazuir

Timothée Varon

Chorus

Chorus of the Grand Théâtre de Genève

Orchestra

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande

French

Don Carlos (French version)

Geneva

Switzerland

Grand-Théâtre

Don Carlos Verdi

Public

Approved

Honneur et démesure sous l'Inquisition espagnole : le monumental Don Carlos de Giuseppe Verdi ouvre la saison des « Jeux de pouvoir » du Grand Théâtre. Lydia Steier (mise en scène) et Eve-Maud Hubeaux (La princesse Éboli) présentent la production.

Avec Don Carlos, Verdi écartèle les coulisses du pouvoir et dénonce le fanatisme religieux, mais rend aussi plus humaines les contradictions et les actions des personnages.

Our season opens with a very grown-up Verdi, a political Verdi, the Verdi of Don Carlos. Led by conductor Marc Minkowski, we continue our exploration of the continent of French Grand Opera after Les Huguenots (2020) and La Juive (2022), even if Verdi’s last Parisian work was especially successful in its Italian version, itself largely translated from the French one. In 1867, Giuseppe Verdi was at the height of his career; he already had more than twenty operas under his belt and reluctantly accepted this new commission from the Paris Opera. After a very difficult period of composition, during which the piece did not really reach its final maturity, il maestro left us the choice of multiple versions of his magnum opus. Friedrich Schiller’s play Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien, created 80 years earlier, served as the framework for the composer and his successive librettists. Land of honour and hubris, the Spain of Philip II, dominated by the omnipresent Inquisition, is the backdrop for the characters sprung from Schiller’s aesthetic ideal of Sturm und Drang. Between emotion and ideology, Verdi employs these characters to expose the backstage of power and denounce religious fanaticism, but also to present their contradictions, if not their actions, as more human.
Director Lydia Steier, who brought us Les Indes galantes in 2019, comes back to Geneva with a grandiose portrayal of absolutism and the culture of secrecy. In a dystopian society where every move is recorded and reported and can be used against anyone at any time, the characters survive in shades of yellow. Distanced from truth and idealism, they are creatures of fear in a dark and claustrophobic universe where even King Philip II, played by the Russian bass Dimitry Ulyanov, (who we see again after War and Peace, La Juive and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District) is apparently not the only one to hold power. The Marquis de Posa, sung by the renowned French baritone Stéphane Degout, turns into a dangerous politician whose opportunism has devoured any trace of optimism, as does the scheming Princess Eboli – Swiss mezzo Ève-Maud Hubeaux, a rising star of the opera skies. The unhappy couple Don Carlos/Élisabeth de Valois, doomed to a tragic fate, is sung by two US artists, Charles Castronovo and Rachel Willis-Sørensen.

English

Don Carlos (French version) by Verdi, From (2023/2023), Directed by Lydia Steier,, Conductor Marc Minkowski, Grand-Théâtre, Geneva, Switzerland

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

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Programme, About & Synopsis

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