Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlos – Still Relevant After 155 Years

“Au revoir dans un monde où la vie est meilleure.” (To see each other again in a world where life is better.) This phrase could just as well refer to our world, in which a pandemic still separates many of us while we nurture the hope that life will get better, and we will see each other again. Yet this phrase is 155 years old. It is sung in Act V of Giuseppe Verdi’s operatic masterpiece, Don Carlos, in the original French version, by the Queen of Spain, Elisabeth de Valois, who reassures her stepson, Don Carlos, the Infante of Spain, that they will meet again in a better world. In the opera, the connotation is spiritual rather than earthly, and many who have lost loved ones share and find comfort in that faith. For those unfamiliar with the opera’s story, stepmother and stepson are around the same age—twenty-three if we go by history—and engaged in the earthly struggle of sublimating their love for one another. They were originally betrothed until Don Carlos’s father, King Philip II, eighteen years their senior, decided to make Elisabeth his wife. Thus, the tone was set for a devastating family tragedy unfolding on the political canvas of persecution and oppression painted in blood by the Spanish Inquisition and by Philip himself.

The real King Philip II of Spain and Elisabeth at her coronation – Bibliothèque nationale de France (Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

No wonder that the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Verdi’s Don Carlos by director David McVicar, opening on February 28, draws inspiration for its set from catacombs and tombs, as McVicar stated in an interview for an article on the Met’s website (link to article listed at the end). Which conveys an aura not only of looming death but also entrapment, in two senses: feeling trapped and being ensnared into the dangerous power dynamics between monarchy and church. McVicar compares the production’s concept to Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, the play that introduced the often-misunderstood quote: “Hell is other people”—not a general suggestion but one specific to Sartre’s version of an afterlife hell with three people trapped in a room condemned to watch and torture each other psychologically for eternity. 

The real Prince Don Carlos, Infante of Spain – portrait by Alonso Sánchez Coello (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Similarly, none of the opera’s characters can escape the dominance and surveillance of the church, embodied by the Grand Inquisitor, and the government, represented by King Philip, the mighty ruler over the vast territory called “the empire on which the sun never sets.” In his aria, “Elle ne m’aime pas” (She doesn’t love me) Philip wishes for the power to “read others’ hearts where only God can see everything,” which is ultimately where Sartre’s No Exit leads: to being seen and defined by the gaze and opinions of those who observe one, and never escaping that surveillance. And don’t so many, in the days of social media, often turn themselves into the object of the gaze and judgment of others, distorting their looks, traits, and realities of their life situations to put on a show? Not to mention the public shaming of various figures, from performers to athletes, amplified by these platforms?

So what do today’s issues have to do with an opera whose plot has its roots in sixteenth-century Spanish history? For starters, let me mention a few themes: authoritarianism, oppression, persecution, fake news, ostracism or, shall we say, cancel culture, the sudden disappearance of “unsettling” individuals, limitation of choices and freedoms. Sound familiar? Needless to state, such issues are not new. History is a kaleidoscope that rearranges what humans confront in various configurations. Add to that a global pandemic and the limitations on freedom and power of choice tighten their grip. 

1867 poster of Don Carlos confronting his father Philip over the death of Rodrigue – unknown author (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

In Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre stated that “existence precedes essence” on his quest to affirm that human beings have choices, even in how they approach the most oppressive situations. He believed that we are “condemned to be free,” a paradox, since condemnation is in itself an imposition. We might add a caveat to that (which Sartre referred to as our “facticity” in Being and Nothingness): the mere coming into existence dictates biological essence; just take our inherited DNA. None among us has a choice in our biological parents, our genes, our places of birth and growth. 

Neither did Don Carlos: he could never disassociate from being the son, heir apparent, and subject of Philip, or in the case of the actual historical figure, escape the mental and physical disabilities caused by the inbreeding within his family. His freedom and choices were limited and defined by his father’s DNA, actions, and regime. The rest is history, or rather a history that houses extensive speculation on the fate of the Spanish prince. Locked up by his father, Don Carlos died in his room with nailed-up windows on July 24, 1568, sixteen days after turning twenty-three. This young public figure suffering from mental and physical disabilities was deemed a threat to the state and “canceled” to the point of physical annihilation, and Philip refused to disclose how.  

Monastery of San Yuste – François Liger (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Inevitably, Don Carlos’s death sparked international imagination, politically and artistically. Some political reports and historical works implied that he had been murdered by orders of his father. At the same time, Philip’s brutal suppression of the anti-Inquisition revolt in the Netherlands was exacerbating an already widespread hatred of Spain. Flemish nobles who had fled to Germany launched an anti-Spain propaganda through pamphlets and word-of-mouth rumors, using Don Carlos’s mysterious death as explosive content for their mission. In this, they were aided by various ambassadors who had been at Spanish court during the disappearance of the Infante and whose accounts hinted at foul play, and at Philip as a monstrous, murderous father. Sometimes, those reports were manipulated. Take the case of English diplomat John Man who changed his story for personal reasons. While at first Man reported that Don Carlos was arrested because of his mental instability, when he was dismissed from court, in anger, he started spreading rumors that Philip had poisoned his son. Fake news fueled by political and personal agendas… déja-vu, anyone?

From this type of “official” sliding into fiction, under the guise of history, literary and artistic treatments of the Infante’s story were just one inevitable tiny step away.  And they blossomed throughout the centuries, bringing us thrilling works like César Vichard de Saint-Réal’s Dom Carlos, nouvelle historique (1672) and Friedrich Schiller’s play, Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien (1787). Then came Verdi’s own musical variation of historical fiction, on a French libretto by Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle, commissioned and produced by the Paris Opéra. In the context of the exit-less oppression of Philip and the Grand Inquisitor’s regime, Verdi and his librettists chose a transcendent ending, even though the composer himself detested the deus-ex-machina interference of the spirit of Don Carlos’s grandfather, emperor Charles V. The opera ends with the emperor pulling his grandson from the clutches of the Grand Inquisitor and Philip into the Saint-Just (San Yuste) monastery. Stage directors have played with this ending in a variety of concepts, some avoiding the supernatural touch altogether and having Don Carlos murdered on stage. I, for one, am eagerly awaiting McVicar’s take on the ending. Will his Don Carlos have an exit or not?

Baril Gédéon, “Il Maestro Verdi”, cartoon by Le Hanneron, 14 March 1867. Museum of the Paris Opera (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Opera fans and timeless issues aside, why would anyone spend four hours watching an opera that premiered 155 years ago? Just mention Wagner and a long night at the opera is to be expected; that association is ingrained into our cultural consciousness. But a four-hour opera in French by Verdi? It is indeed the Italian composer’s longest opera, or rather the longest version of it, as it underwent several revisions over two decades following its premiere, and it is more frequently performed in Italian. I won’t wax poetic—well, maybe just a touch—about the sublime music, the ravaging political and personal drama, and the fact that this masterpiece’s long-overdue arrival here is a historic moment for the Metropolitan Opera as for New York City’s cultural life. 

I will suggest that opening up to this story and to the visceral messages flowing to us on Verdi’s musical waves brings a much-needed catharsis, along with the solace that, throughout centuries, we have never been alone in our challenges and limitations. Then again, how prosaic to declare what we already know: that one of the purposes of music, art, and literature is to remind us of the fellowship of endurance and resilience we have with humans across time. And of possessing the ability to choose even when trapped in the tightest corners. Of always finding an “exit”—in the sense of a solution—even when that “exit” is merely an internal pathway into a space filled with imagination and resonance with beliefs and emotions that uplift, animate, release, and soothe. 

In a world where autocracies create alliances, where the surveilling gaze exploits our need to connect, where a pandemic still governs our daily choices, where persecution, inequality, ignorance, and all kinds of discrimination and suppression of basic human rights and freedoms run rampant, Verdi’s Don Carlos is not so outdated after all. Let it serve as a temporary exit from day-to-day trials and as a kind of sympathetic mirror to our challenges. Better yet, let it serve as an entrance into a universe where music and drama dilate the complex emotions we experience until we recognize and own every microscopic fiber of those emotions, and transcend them, if only to return to the world purged, refreshed, and ready to take it on again. This opera that, in its time contended with its own persecution and limitations—such as censorship and banning by The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition—will do all that for us, and more, if we let it.  

Discover more:

Article on the Metropolitan Opera’s premiere

The Don Carlos Enigma by Maria-Cristina Necula 

Top: Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi by Giovanni Boldini 1886 (Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

About Maria-Cristina Necula (181 Articles)
Maria-Cristina Necula’s published work includes the books "The Don Carlos Enigma: Variations of Historical Fictions" and "Life in Opera: Truth, Tempo and Soul," two translations: "Europe à la carte" and Molière’s "The School for Wives," and the collection of poems "Evanescent." Her articles and interviews have been featured in "Classical Singer" Magazine, "Opera America," "Das Opernglas," "Studies in European Cinema," and "Opera News." As a classically trained singer she has performed in the New York City area at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Florence Gould Hall, and the Westchester Broadway Theatre, and has presented on opera at The Graduate Center, Baruch, The City College of New York, and UCLA Southland. She speaks six languages, two of which she honed at the Sorbonne University in Paris and the University of Vienna, and she holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The Graduate Center, CUNY. In 2022, Maria-Cristina was awarded a New York Press Club Award in the Critical Arts Review category for her review of Matthew Aucoin's "Eurydice" at the Metropolitan Opera, published on Woman Around Town. She is a 2022-24 Fellow of The Writers' Institute at The Graduate Center.