phantomtomato

okay I had SO many feelings about this 2024 Vienna Don Carlo. Watching another whole Don Carlo in early 2026 was not actually in my plans (having watched lots of bits and pieces in late 2025), but uh I may have written a fic involving a fictional staging of this opera that doubled the role of Posa, and then Ladybug_21 mentioned that they'd heard of a production with doubles of all the historical characters -- meaning not Posa but the other main characters -- and of course I had to go find it. I am here to report that it is this absolutely wild regie modern AU that I adored and found completely riveting. Those of you who dislike regie would greatly dislike it (although the singing is great, consider listening to the audio) and those of you who like regie would quite enjoy it, I think. The director is Kirill Serebrennikov, and now I want to see any opera he ever does. I found the staging (with a couple of exceptions) a rather coherent and fascinating concept.

(So as to put this outside of the cut: this is the 4-act version. Joshua Guerrero is Carlo, Étienne Dupuis is Rodrigo, Roberto Tagliavini is Filippo, Asmik Grigorian is Elisabetta, and Eve-Maud Hubeaux is Eboli. I had not heard or watched any of them except Dupuis, but I thought all of them were great, the singing was just gorgeous and their acting is wonderful too. I am really loving the modern trend of opera singers being great actors.)

( I went in unspoiled except for the above and LOVED being unspoiled, so I'm putting all of this under cut, just in case -- spoilers for the entire production. )But tl;dr: I did feel like the updating of the setting did drive home what an opera of big themes and big emotions Don Carlo is, and how the relationships (except for Filippo-Rodrigo, in this production) drive the big emotions that drive the opera. (Interestingly, the singers don't touch very much; Rodrigo and Carlo do a little, and Elisabetta and Carlo touch hands very briefly in their last duet, and then of course embrace right before Filippo walks in -- but as opposed to that heartbreaking Bastille Don Carlos I saw, it still all works without the touching, and just highlights how our society is much less touchy-feely than it could be.

I really liked it, and I was both thinking about it days later and humming little bits of the score.