An Italian grand opera in five acts
Libretto Joseph Méry, Camille du Locle (French libretto, Achille de Lauzières, Arrigo Boito (Italian libretto) First performance of the
opera March 11, 1867, Salle Le Peletier (Opéra de Paris)
When Giuseppe Verdi began to create the opera Don Carlos for the Paris Opera based on the French libretto by Joseph Méry and Camillo du Loclo , which was based on the motifs of the play Don Carlos, Infant von SpanienFriedrich Schiller from 1787, he has composed twenty-four operas on his successful international tour. It should be emphasized at the outset that Schiller used several sources in the creation of his drama, a good part of which are questionable or influenced by revisionist theories, speculations, rumors and mythomaniac and sensationalist tendencies towards scandals. Nevertheless, the unity between historical facts, drama and Verdi's grand opera (fr. grand opéra) can be seen in the fact that the marriage of the Spanish king Philip II was crucial for the political and cultural rapprochement of Spain and France. with the then teenage princess, Elizabeth de Valois, daughter of Queen Catherine de' Medici and Henry II. An insight into complex and often conflicting kinship relationships shows that Carlos, the title character of Schiller's play and Verdi's opera, son of the Spanish king Philip II. and his first wife, Maria of Portugal, who died of complications during childbirth just two days after Carlos was born. After Carlos was entrusted to the custody of Philip's sister, regent Juana Blazna, shortly after his birth, Philip II. married Elizabeth de Valois in 1560, with whom Carlos also became emotionally close.
Both Verdi's opera and Schiller's drama are fueled by a historical pre-context of mutually conflicting and competitive love relationships, moral duty as well as unrealized political ideals. In this sense, Verdi's great and at the same time "reimagined" or reimagined historical opera Don Carlo(s)- whether in the French or Italian version - appears as a complex dramatic panorama of human passions, woven between the six most prominent figures - Philip II, his son Don Carlo, Queen Elizabeth (Don Carlo's former fiancée, whom his father married), Princess Eboli , Rodrigo and the Grand Inquisitor. Verdi's ethos and sense of justice, which was generated by reading the fundamental philosophical and artistic works of the Enlightenment, including Schiller's plays, are thus during the composition of the opera Don Carlo(s)came to the fore, which is reflected in the composer's emphasis on human dignity, brotherhood and personal freedom. Verdi conveniently placed his artistic manifesto against absolutism - whether secular or ecclesiastical - in 16th-century Spain, during the time of the Church Inquisition, when the line between secular and ecclesiastical authority was anything but clear, and personal aspirations and intimate love desires were often suppressed or sacrificed for the "higher good".
In accordance with the psychologically constructed musical drama, it really cannot surprise us that, in addition to the powerful scenes, virtuoso and singingly demanding arias, Verdi also devoted a lot of creative energy to the music of spiritual nobility, such as we can admire, for example, in Rodrigo's aria Io morro, ma lieto in core . The end of the opera is also surprising, in which the intervention of a higher power is not lacking (in the sense of deus ex machina) - for example, the condemned Don Carlo is saved by none other than his grandfather, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was considered dead and takes the form of a monk. With this melodramatic allegory, Verdi wanted to confirm the existence of a loving force that, as a kind of spiritual guardian, watches over the lives of persons who, due to injustice or a series of unfortunate circumstances, were deprived of their freedom and even their lives. The masterful synthesis of words and music, which Verdi conceived for the "Italian music of the future", was thus embodied in a firmer fusion of melody, text and stage semantics, which raised the historical context of the opera Don Carlo to the level of timelessness and the metaphysics of the human condition as such.
