New York-centric as she is, La Cieca cannot help but sulk when she hears that the Met is in line for Nicholas Hynter‘s “rather limited” staging of Don Carlo that opened last night at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. 

According to Dominic McHugh, writing at musicalcriticism.com,

Nicholas Hytner’s new staging – a costly co-production with the Metropolitan Opera and the Norwegian National Opera – is, for me, a disappointment … [T]he production satisfies few of Verdi’s more interesting dramaturgical ideas, says nothing new about most of the themes elaborated in the libretto and strikes me as rather limited in its stagecraft.

Almost without exception, the big arias and monologues were delivered with no attempt at expressing the text, be it Elisabetta’s ‘Tu che le vanita’ or the King’s great soliloquy ….

But for an opera which has such potential for beauty and grandeur, Bob Crowley‘s designs are curiously lacking in inspiration. Act I shows us white plastic trees, two white tree stumps and a piece of white sheeting on the ground to represent snow; the cloister of San Yuste is represented by a pitifully basic tomb with ‘Carlos’ written on the side; the wall in Act II, Part 2 looks as if it’s been made out of giant Lego bricks with a cross-shaped hole in the middle; and the King’s Study scene has rarely been so emptily or dully staged in my experience. All the symbolism has been too broadly painted – religion and the loneliness of power are represented but not explored to their full potential – and on the other hand, the loud shouting and jeering of the chorus during the condemnation of the heretics in Act III is wildly excessive …

On the other hand, Rolando Villazón wins enthusiastic praise for the “elegance of line” and “classical nuance” of his singing, which the reviewer found “deeply moving.”  Not surprisingly, though, “Villazón was occasionally a little too neurotic in terms of acting.”

The Met Futures page is currently under construction, so La Cieca can’t check this, but it seems that Villazón’s Carlos is one element of this production that will not make the journey to New York. Instead, we get the plastic trees and the Lego cloister.