Sheridan Morley, impressed with Michael Grandage's staging of Schiller's Don Carlos last February, turned to a fellow critic at the Gielgud Theatre and asked if they had known that it was such a terrific piece, adding jocularly that somebody ought to make an opera of it.
[New Statesman, 26 September 2005]
Opera - Crucifixes and Christmas chic overwhelm Verdi and Nielsen, writes Tom Sutcliffe
Don Carlos
Welsh National Opera, Cardiff
Maskarade
Royal Opera House, London WC2
Sheridan Morley, impressed with Michael Grandage's staging of Schiller's Don Carlos last February, turned to a fellow critic at the Gielgud Theatre and asked if they had known that it was such a terrific piece, adding jocularly that somebody ought to make an opera of it. Verdi's operatic version of Schiller's play is one of his most psychologically fascinating and musically rewarding works. It is also his longest opera, which he fiddled with a lot when it was put into Italian, having been less than properly appreciated in French when it was performed in Paris.