European machinations and heartbreak come to Hong Kong.

In an old cartoon gag, a surgeon, having just released torrents of blood from his patient’s jugular by making the wrong incision, corks the leak only to see two more spring up from other parts of the body. Eventually, he’s applying pressure to an unmanageable multiplicity of wounds using extremities he didn’t even know he had. Don Carlo, Opera Hong Kong’s latest production, is kind of like that.

Verdi’s historically based, semi-Oedipal opera tells the story of Spanish Prince Carlo, madly fixated on his ex-lover, Princess Elisabeth of France, who – in the very first act – is married to Carlo’s father, King Philip II. Even before the opera begins, we’re introduced to a convenient solution for a political problem – marry the King of Spain to a French princess to make peace between the two warring countries – which triggers emotional devastation and foreshadows conflict between matters of state and affairs of the heart.

All this is set, no less, during the Spanish Inquisition and the aftermath of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, when Catholic Spain violently scrambled to eradicate all Jews, Moors, and Protestants. In an attempt to uncover how such a labyrinthine plotline could be conveyed through opera, I asked director Henry Akina for his take on the politics of Don Carlo.

Which did you consciously decide to emphasize more heavily, the general socio-political issues or the individual emotions and relationships? Or did you want to highlight both?
One of the great achievements of Verdi’s score is to show us the political elements of the time in great detail in the emotions and relationships of the characters. It is absolutely impossible to separate one from the other in Don Carlo, and I see my work as balancing these two components to make the production move and breathe.

The opera takes place during Europe’s Protestant Reformation. With Spain’s attempts at counter-reformation, what role does religious and political atmosphere play in the opera?
Verdi’s score is highly atmospheric. In setting the production, we concentrated on the sense of imprisonment that the family of the head of state feels in the confines of the Escorial Palace – the monument that Philip II built [side-by-side with a Catholic monastery] for himself and his family at the very centre of Spain.
At the beginning we hear the monks intone how all human striving is but the action of animated dust, even that of the great Emperor, and then the intrigue explodes: The Grand Inquisitor wields more power than the state, so that the head of the church and the head of state square off in the third act.

In the end, all power stems from human submission to it, so the great question is posed whether to submit to God – as interpreted by man – or to man – as organized by other men.

This opera is usually in four acts, even though originally another act preceded the four commonly performed ones. What are the reasons – besides length – this first act is cut?
The four-act version concentrates more on the events in Spain, the political events that were Verdi’s major concern. The five-act version includes the Fontainebleau act, which takes place in an almost utopian fantasy in the French countryside where Carlo and Elisabeth are wrapped in love until the announcement of Elisabeth’s betrothal to Phillip and her elevation to queen. Schiller did not write an act in Fontainebleau and so the four-act version follows the play a bit more closely. It is important to note that the four-act version was made by Verdi himself, it is not some cutting done by other hands, and thus we are assured that he also had a great belief in its dynamics.

What were some unique challenges to staging this specific performance of Don Carlo?
The greatest challenge is all of Verdi’s monumental works is to keep the action moving and to give the characters enough space to unfold while doing so. I am particularly grateful to Peter Dean Beck, our set designer, for having found a way to make the acts of Don Carlo flow into each other so that we do not lose too much time in the mammoth scene changes that the plot suggests.

Do you think the political and spiritual questions in Don Carlo will resonate with contemporary audiences?
I think it is up to the audience to tell us how this opera may be relevant to their lives. As artists we can only hold the mirror of our art in their direction. They will need to know if the image they see there is indeed relevant to the lives they lead.

Opera HK’s Don Carlo will be performed on September 3-7 at the Grand Theatre of the HK Cultural Centre. Showtime is 7:30pm nightly. Tickets cost $900 to $150 from URBTIX, 2734 9009. The full text of this interview is online at www.bcmagazine.net.