Okay, the quest for an English language or English-subtitled production of Don Carlos on dvd so far has proven in vain, but I haven't given up. Not least because the Brits have done some quite sucucessful Schiller productions in the last decade. Also, please do request the play for Yuletide, that would be a fascinating canon to write for!
Also, herearesometrailers for Don Carlos theatre productions. Aside from demonstrating the excesses of German Regietheater re: style, I hope they're also a bit entertaining in that you can have fun guessing which scenes they picked for the trailer, and who is who. (Well, other than Carlos, who is immediately identifiable by being young and yelling. Otoh Posas come in every age, from same age as the Carlos actor to at least a decade older.) Anyway, one of the trailers which includes Carlos telling Philip "you offered him your favor, but he died for me!" and "you thought you had him, but you were only a tool of his plans" reminded me again that yes, the play is quite consciously a father-son rivalry not just about a woman but about a man.
Verdi, gosh, he's so brilliant, and there are these emotional truths that I think music just is really good at getting at
That is very true, and I love opera. A lot of libretti would sound hollow and empty when read precisely because the music conveys so much and can do so in so many layers.
Another thing about Philip's characterisation and the whole Philip-Carlos-Posa set up: for Schiller, writing at the time he did, the awareness of a famous royal father-son conflict just a generation earlier in a German kingdom must have been there, to wit, Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, his son, the future Friedrich II., and his son's best friend, Hans-Herrmann von Katte. Young Frederick being driven to wanting to desert by his father's abuse, Katte being executed for it (in front of future Friedrich II.), and the whole Prussian concept of duty vs humanity, the parallels were certainly there, and every dramatist trying to dramatize this episode from Friedrich II's youth basically wrote a remix of Don Carlos. The thing is, while Friedrich Wilhelm was a horrible tyrant towards his family, he was also an extremely dutiful workoholic king (in an age where the norm were partygoers) and fair to his subjects (for a monarch, and if they weren't his son's best friend); gestures like Philip being the only one fair to the Armada Admiral instead of blaming him are very much in that vein.
Something that interests me on the periphery of all this is that Elisabeth de Valois historically was Catherine de' Medici's oldest daughter (and the marriage one of many gestures to overcome the traditional France-Spain rivalry for primary Catholic power on the continent) and yet both Schiller and Verdi's librettists chose to ignore that connection entirely in terms of what Catherine's popular image was in their (Schiller's and Verdi's) times in favour of presenting Elisabeth as free of Spanish fanaticism due to French enlightenment. "In meinem Frankreich war's noch anders" (oh, how different my France was) indeed. (It's on my mind because I wrote about Catherine and her three daughters a while ago.)
no subject
Also, here are some trailers for Don Carlos theatre productions. Aside from demonstrating the excesses of German Regietheater re: style, I hope they're also a bit entertaining in that you can have fun guessing which scenes they picked for the trailer, and who is who. (Well, other than Carlos, who is immediately identifiable by being young and yelling. Otoh Posas come in every age, from same age as the Carlos actor to at least a decade older.) Anyway, one of the trailers which includes Carlos telling Philip "you offered him your favor, but he died for me!" and "you thought you had him, but you were only a tool of his plans" reminded me again that yes, the play is quite consciously a father-son rivalry not just about a woman but about a man.
Verdi, gosh, he's so brilliant, and there are these emotional truths that I think music just is really good at getting at
That is very true, and I love opera. A lot of libretti would sound hollow and empty when read precisely because the music conveys so much and can do so in so many layers.
Another thing about Philip's characterisation and the whole Philip-Carlos-Posa set up: for Schiller, writing at the time he did, the awareness of a famous royal father-son conflict just a generation earlier in a German kingdom must have been there, to wit, Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, his son, the future Friedrich II., and his son's best friend, Hans-Herrmann von Katte. Young Frederick being driven to wanting to desert by his father's abuse, Katte being executed for it (in front of future Friedrich II.), and the whole Prussian concept of duty vs humanity, the parallels were certainly there, and every dramatist trying to dramatize this episode from Friedrich II's youth basically wrote a remix of Don Carlos. The thing is, while Friedrich Wilhelm was a horrible tyrant towards his family, he was also an extremely dutiful workoholic king (in an age where the norm were partygoers) and fair to his subjects (for a monarch, and if they weren't his son's best friend); gestures like Philip being the only one fair to the Armada Admiral instead of blaming him are very much in that vein.
Something that interests me on the periphery of all this is that Elisabeth de Valois historically was Catherine de' Medici's oldest daughter (and the marriage one of many gestures to overcome the traditional France-Spain rivalry for primary Catholic power on the continent) and yet both Schiller and Verdi's librettists chose to ignore that connection entirely in terms of what Catherine's popular image was in their (Schiller's and Verdi's) times in favour of presenting Elisabeth as free of Spanish fanaticism due to French enlightenment. "In meinem Frankreich war's noch anders" (oh, how different my France was) indeed. (It's on my mind because I wrote about Catherine and her three daughters a while ago.)