The lion’s share of attention among these sessions has gone to the scene from Don Carlo. It happens that this is the one of the operas represented here that I have heard N-S conduct. In Opera as Opera, I characterized both the Met’s physical production and N-S’s leadership as “concerned with making a weighty, deep, long work seem less weighty, deep, and long,” and expressed impatience with N-S’s regurgitation (in an intermission interview) of what has become a conductorial cliché of “making chamber music together.” So it could be said that I carry into his work on the aria not a prejudice (for that would be a judgment based on no prior knowledge), but at least a tendency toward confirmation bias, which it is my sacred critical duty to guard against. In the class, Nézet-Séguin is fortunate in having a soprano with a beautiful voice and an advanced technique to work with on this material. N.B.: any technical observations of my own on these singers’ present capabilities are not meant to reflect on how they have been trained to date—after all, we don’t know how far, or whence, they’ve already come, or what direction they’re taking now. Whether the Don Carlo soprano is, or will be, a true Verdi dramatic soprano or not, her voice is of sufficient format and quality to work on the assigned piece, which is a big one. Its structure follows ABA convention, but the B section is a sequence of four connected but distinct episodes, and the whole demands a very wide range of vocal and musical expression. Let’s just follow it through, concentrating on what N-S does and doesn’t suggest.

The setting is the cloister of the convent of San Giusto, whose defining feature is the tomb of Carlo V. It looks the same as it did in the opening act (of the four-act edition), except that whereas we saw it then in the light of dawn, we see it now on a moonlit night. Elisabetta has summoned Carlo here with the express purpose of bidding him a last goodbye and strengthening his resolve for the mission of Flemish independence for which Rodrigo has died. She enters (slowly, and absorbed in her thoughts, according to the stage directions) during the sombre opening section of the orchestral introduction (a brass evocation of the chanting of the monks in the earlier scene, soon joined by an anguished upper string line) , and kneels before the tomb. The music’s mood is now transformed into one of the utmost agitation, reflective of Elisabetta’s inner turmoil. Then it subsides, though not without accents that suggest a soul still searching for peace, and finally resolves into expressive, wide-ranged phrases for the violins (the starting point for our accompanist), which finally settle down onto one more solemn chord, whereupon the monologue begins. Elisabetta declaims, in a strong phrase, unaccompanied except for discreet tremolandi at phrase endings, that descends from the upper F# to the low C#: “You, who have known the vanities of the world, and now lie content in the deep rest of the grave . . .”