Eleanor Wachtel is the host of CBC Radio’s Writers & Company and Wachtel on the Arts, and she’s the author of Original Minds and Random Illuminations. For Canadians, her name is synonymous with great literature and the performing arts, and opera is particularly close to her heart.
CBC Music asked Wachtel to reflect on a piece of classical music that’s important to her. After some consideration, she settled on one of Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpieces.
“The first opera I ever saw was Verdi’s Don Carlo at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, when I was 18. Later I learnt that my seats were in what are called “the gods” – so high up they are close to heaven. I should have been suspicious when the girl sitting next to me had a copy of the complete score on her lap. If I leant precariously over the balcony, I could make out the tiny figures on stage. But the music was sublime. I was already familiar with the great male-bonding duet between Don Carlo and his pal Rodrigo, dedicating themselves “to live or die together” liberating Flanders. It’s a musical motif that recurs throughout the opera and that a classmate in high school used to hum to me when he’d walk me home. (He had a whole repertoire of arias but that one was especially sweet and memorable. Obviously, he couldn’t quite manage the exquisite blend and weaving of those two voices – that I discovered at Covent Garden.)”
José Carreras (Don Carlo) and Piero Cappuccilli (Rodrigo) sing the duet Dio, che dell'alma infondere at the 1986 Salzburg Festival.
Despite the “nose bleed” seats at Covent Garden, Wachtel’s first trip to the opera was immediately captivating.
“This was before surtitles so you had to quickly read the plot summaries in the program before each act. Don Carlo is about star-crossed lovers, political strife, the Inquisition, etc., etc. – a perfect introduction to opera’s melodramatic stories. Especially poignant – and once again illustrating the dramatic power of music – is the long cello prelude to Act IV, winning our sympathy for the villainous King Philip, who laments about his wife (who’s in love with his son, Don Carlo), ‘She never loved me… .’ That first opera experience made me aware of its emotional intensity and force, melody that awakens the senses, totally bypassing rational thought. Sheer romance.”
Passionate about literature, Wachtel pays Verdi the highest tribute.
“There are other operas I’ve come to love more but I do think that Verdi has given me as much pleasure in life as Shakespeare. (I remember Urjo Kareda arguing that the opera Otello was perhaps even better than the play, tighter, more focused – a heretical thought, but worth considering.) And opera does offer that total experience of orchestral and vocal music, theatre and set design, passion and poetry.”
Did your first experience at the opera make you a fan? Let us know in the comments below, or write to us at classical@cbc.ca
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