Opera Ireland's artistic director Dieter Kaegi has in a remarkably short space of time, since the landmark SalomΘ of 1999, transformed the artistic profile of his company in a positive way. Some of his own productions, however, have been controversial for all the wrong reasons, and his new Don Carlo, which opened its five-performance run at the Gaiety Theatre on Saturday, will weigh heavily on the downside of his personal achievement as a director.
There's a style of opera production today which inhabits a strange sort of no man's land, where imagery is free and loose, sparseness is taken to be evocatively rich, and anything might or might not be a symbol for, well, anything else. You could take it all to be the refraction of a dreamworld. But, then, who can know what to make of such a dream when any sense of contact with the work being produced seems so utterly out of the question.
Kaegi's production, with designs by Louis Desire, ladles on its messages about the cruelty of the Spanish Inquisition with B-movie subtlety. A lot of what's presented on stage is not so much a distraction as a disruption.
The heavily Russian cast includes some impressive voices (Maria Riadtchikova's Eboli, and Maxim Mikhailov's Filippo) but convincing characterisation proves too difficult in the circumstances and the feeling for Verdian line is limited. Alexander Fedin's Don Carlo is pinched in tone and unstable in vibrato and Natalia Kostenko's Elisabetta is also unsympathetic.
US baritone William Killmeier's Rodrigo found his form on the opening night after an unsettled start, Ukrainian bass Aleksander Teliga was suitably severe as the Grand Inquisitor, and British bass William Peel was authoritative as the Monk.
The chorus sang with presence, and Gerhard Markson got some controlled playing from the RT╔ Concert Orchestra but often proved more faithful to the letter than the spirit of the score.
