Don Carlo

Inspired by a visit to the Kyoto Costume Institute in Japan, director Kirill Serebrennikov brings the plot of Don Carlo into a contemporary context. He also drew inspiration for his stage design from this institute, where original objects from all eras and cultures are kept, prepared and stored in order to protect them from decay.

Serebrennikov's examination of this transience opened up another dimension of Verdi's opera: the knowledge of the transience of man, his passions, his efforts and his deeds, the flow of time that noticeably or imperceptibly erases and destroys everything man has made. Alongside these two dimensions - the remnants of the 16th century and the present day - there is a third level, an intermediate zone in which past and present intermingle.

The Marquis of Posa, the only figure who is not historically documented and who embodies the Enlightenment and modern man, also plays an important role in the production. In Serebrennikov's production, he plays an activist who addresses the consequences of the overproduction and overconsumption of textiles and clothing.

 

The musical language exhibits an almost morbid raffiness: an elegance, empfindsamkeit and rapture of the sweeping melodies, an abysmally shadowed harmony, darkly glowing orchestral colors that make all contrasts, however abrupt, appear veiled and muted.

 

Verdi worked on this opera, with interruptions, for over twenty years. There are no fewer than seven versions created with the composer's direct involvement. Italian productions of the five-act work, which premiered in Paris, gave Verdi the opportunity to make radical rewrites and to recompose entire scene complexes. A condensed four-act version was first presented at La Scala in Milan in 1884 - it will also form the basis of the new Viennese production.

 

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(Source: wiener-staatsoper.at)