Some consider it flawed in construction despite its important and still relevant themes, but all yield to the greatness of its music.

Many musicologists, though not all, view the opera as Verdi’s finest. The Metropolitan Opera recently performed Don Carlos, its first ever production of the original in French. It didn’t fare all that well, and Verdi produced several revisions, the most important and most often performed is the one for his homeland, a four-act version with the libretto translated into Italian, called Don Carlo. What difference does an s make? Verdi and his librettists Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle originally wrote a grand, five-act opera in French for Paris titled Don Carlos (including a ballet not often performed today). This was concert opera at its fullest and then some.Īny report on a performance of Don Carlo has a lot to unpack, beginning with the question of why it is sometimes called Don Carlos. MDLO’s partially staged performance included a seventy-one piece orchestra, a twenty piece Banda, and a seventy-four member chorus, six lead soloists and eight contributing singers. Maryland Lyric Opera gets high marks on all of these, and all three were on full display Friday night in MDLO’s showpiece production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo (1867) in concert.

I love it when there is a commitment to community riding alongside the commitment to the arts. I love it when the commitment to quality is absolute. I love it when the professional hand is in evidence.

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