Lyric Opera 2022-2023 Issue 4- Don Carlos

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 34 was 75 when Don Carlos premiered. Initially sympathetic to the Risorgimento , he changed course and adopted an extreme conservative and church-authoritarian posture. In 1864 he issued a “Syllabus of Errors,” an attack on all forms of liberalism, religious toleration, personal autonomy, and national self-determinationwhich still makes chilling reading. He reversed the religious toleration laws of the Republic and reinstituted the Jewish ghetto, which he had previously opened. He alsomasterminded the notorious kidnapping of EdgardoMortara, a boy taken by force fromhis Jewish home at the age of six, when a former servant said that she had baptized himduring a time of illness. (This kidnapping has been defended only recently by a conservative legal scholar at Harvard University, with appeal to religious authority!) Verdi clearly saw the Catholic Church as a major foe of republican freedom. In 1866 he wrote to a friend that if war broke out he would be “the rst target—not of the Germans but of the priests.” Andwar indeed threatened. It was at this fraught time, in 1864, that Verdi was invited to Paris to compose a work for the Paris Opéra. He agreed, and after considering several other ideas— including King Lear , which he rejected as lacking spectacle—he turned to Schiller’s play, marking the fourth time (after Giovanna D’Arco (1845), I Masnadieri (1847) and Luisa Miller (1849)) he had turned to the German poet. He worked closely with librettists Camille Du Locle and Joseph Méry, insisting on keeping two scenes from Schiller to which he was especially attached: the scene between Philippe and Rodrigue, with its passionate argument for freedom of speech and belief, and the pivotal scene between Philippe and the Grand Inquisitor. (The librettists complied in a masterfully compressed manner.) Verdi explicitly stipulated that the Inquisitor be “blind and very, very old.” He also asked for additions, especially the auto-da-fé scene, which satis ed his taste for spectacle, and also made an emphatic statement about the danger of fearful obedience to religious authority. Meanwhile,war broke out: Prussia and Italy on one side, Austria and France on the other. Verdi felt great guilt at being away from Italy at this time, writing as he prepared to return, reluctantly, to Paris that he was “ashamed to keep myself busy with notes in these dif cult and anguish-laden moments.” And, in another letter, “I would have tried hard, I would have done whatever small good I could, and I would have enjoyed it and suffered with my own people.” He tried to get out of his contract twice, and was refused, and eventually decided that he must stay in order to avoid costly litigation. The war, as it turned out, was over quickly, and Italy was on the winning side, gaining control over Venice and Venetia under the Treaty of Vienna—thus the Austro-Prussian War is also known as the Third Italian War of Independence. Rehearsals began, but Verdi’s mood, brie y lightened by political events, darkened again with the death of his father, Carlo, in January 1867, which provoked a prolonged depression. But after avoiding rehearsals for a month, Verdi returned, preparing the work for its much- delayed March 11 premiere. Because of the rigid Paris schedule (no earlier than 7 PM, no later than midnight because of the last train to the suburbs), he had to make last-minute cuts of 15 minutes, including an opening scene in which Elisabeth is asked for help by suffering woodcutters, and a duet between Philippe and Carlos after the death of Rodrigue. (These scenes exist and are occasionally restored, but they will not be performed in Lyric’s production.) Throughout the opera’s multinational history, Verdi made many changes and cuts, so there are many authentic versions, one of which—the ve-act revision created for Modena in 1886—Lyric is performing. One thing Verdi never did, however, was write Italian words or compose for an Italian text. Others translated the libretto, and he did not protest, but it is clear that the music is written for the French text, and is best performed in that language. Given its history, it is no surprise that Don Carlos contains trenchant and unforgettable depictions of religious imperialism and human weakness, as the crowd prefers religious fear to the call of liberty, and as Philippe surrenders Rodrigue to the Inquisitor out of personal guilt and fear. But, equally characteristic of its composer, it also contains sympathetic and even merciful depictions of human torment and frailty, in Philippe, Rodrigue, and Eboli. Only the Inquisitor receives no mercy from Verdi’s capacious humanism, because he is the only character unmoved by human love. Carlos and Elisabeth wrestle with their private passions. Monika Rittershaus/Oper Frankfurt