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.

Welsh National Opera in Cardiff does not sing it in Welsh, though sometimes their French sounds like it. Carlo Rizzi, recalled as music director after the failure and resignation of his juvenile successor, conducted with little sense of where the heart of the great epic lies. The final love duet between Carlos and his "mother" Elisabeth de Valois, married to his father King Philip II as a political trophy, drag-ged on at snail's pace. This WNO version is the Paris original with almost every last bar reinstated that Verdi judiciously cut to speed things up.

WNO's cast is an improbable job lot, with a wobbly Philip (Andrea Silvestrelli) who looks like Saddam Hussein and acts like a nightclub bouncer. I missed the suppressed danger of Grandage's Philip (the blessed Derek Jacobi) and Silvestrelli, a bearlike pantomime presence, has little of Jacobi's soul. John Caird's novice staging tries to compensate with a spattering of fascist secret policemen as hangers-on, with the production perversely relocated and updated to 1930s France.

There are, however, good vocal moments. Nuccia Focile is an affecting Elisabeth, though not on a large enough dramatic scale. Paul Charles Clarke in the title role occasionally rings out brilliantly, with some sense of Carlos's difficult character and of the political romance, but is often off-pitch. Scott Hendricks seems anonymous in the pivotal role of Posa, Carlos's liberal friend who tries also to be an honest servant. The prizewinning Guang Yang is sparky as Eboli. But, what with Rizzi's flabby conducting and the fact that Caird has never directed an opera before, no one stands much chance in this overstretched affair. Philip's sleepless confrontation with the Grand Inquisitor goes for nothing. Don Carlos is not ideal for a director to cut his teeth on.

The stage designer Johan Engels has placed tiers of steps around the stage, with handfuls of great crosses hanging slanted from the flies. He does not attempt any realistic visual evocation of the changing landscapes of this highly emotional story. WNO is saving too much money to offer scenic magic, though this is an epic where scene changes and the passage of time matter a lot. Caird directs it as if it were a musical, with production numbers rather than crowds of "real" people. He tries to focus on central issues and characters, but lacks the operatic experience to suppress the vulgarity of Silvestrelli's Philip, or to develop the thin personality of Hendricks's Posa. Crucial psychological moments barely register.

Engels has also designed David Pountney's striking production of Carl Nielsen's Maskarade, which the Royal Opera has imported from the Bregenz Festival in Austria. This has colour and flair, with the shiny aesthetic of a Christmas card, the stage rakishly sloped and luridly decorated with giant theatrical masks and party streamers. Nielsen's music is urbane and witty, though the Danish conductor Michael Sch0nwandt does not energise the piece as compellingly as Ulf Schirmer did in Bregenz. Marie-Jeanne Lecca's costumes are a gorgeous eyeful, especially in the series of ironical numbers about infidelity with which the last act concludes - all choreographed divertingly by Renato Zanella.

This is an opera about a man (Jeronimus, father of the young lover Leander) who thinks fancy-dress party-going is a bad thing. What its plot needs is the crazy complexity of Fledermaus and the serious passions of Figaro. Leander and his servant Henrik, as all-competent as Jeeves, require oodles of charm, which you don't get from the tenor Michael Schade and bass baritone Kyle Ketelsen. The latter's hyperactive grins and grimaces at the audience are entirely counter-productive.

The characters don't jell as they did in Bregenz - though the dancing remains refreshingly lively. Emma Bell in the romantic lead (Leonora, Leander's pick-up the previous night who turns out to be his intended) sings engagingly. Brindley Sherratt, though he could be narkier, gets the measure of Jeronimus. But Martin Winkler, as Master of Ceremonies and a range of other "everyman" roles, commands the stage - as he did at Bregenz.

For booking details and performance times log on to www.wno.org.uk and www.royalopera.org

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