A vocally triumphant ‘Don Carlo’

Michael Fabiano and Mariusz Kwiecien hadn’t even finished singing their Act 2 duet when the applause began, rolling into the War Memorial Opera House like some kind of weighty sonic fog.

If the opening performance as a whole never quite emerged as a dramatic masterpiece, chalk it up to the age-old truth that opera doesn’t begin and end with the singing.

[...] we have one more go-round — the third and hopefully the last — for director Emilio Sagi’s murky and inert production, with Zack Brown’s ornate but dimly lit stage design in which the cast largely shuffles around until it’s time to face forward and sing.

[...] interwoven with that is an essay in statecraft, set in the 16th century Spanish context of war with France, political domination of the Low Countries and a fierce power struggle with the Inquisition.

Not much of that registers very urgently — even the Act 3 auto-da-fé looks more like a farmers’ market — but the soaring musical excitement of Sunday’s matinee, led with welcome vivacity by Music Director Nicola Luisotti, was more than ample compensation.

Fabiano, undertaking the demanding title role for the first time, proved perfectly suited to the task, bringing a combination of heroic heft and ringing tenor clarity to the assignment.

Soprano Ana María Martínez has sung here before, but never with the degree of purity and force that she brought to Elisabetta — especially in “Tu che la vanità,” the Act 5 aria that sums up all the character’s nobility and emotional conflict in a shimmery, expansive vocal line.

With his gleaming, polished sound and impeccably focused phrasing, Pape created a character at once formidable and sympathetic; his long Act 4 soliloquy, accompanied by the San Francisco Opera Orchestra’s great principal cellist David Kadarauch, was a virtuoso display of fierce pathos.