 
Heinrich Spängler
Helga Rabl-Stadler
Entführung
Masterpiece
Don Carlo
The concerts
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A DRAMA OF LOVE AND POLITICS
Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlos
Finding a suitable subject for a libretto is a problem that regularly faces composers of opera. Throughout his life Ludwig van Beethoven considered a whole series of subjects that might have been appropriate for setting to music but he rejected them all apart from Leonore/Fidelio. Richard Wagner evaded the problem altogether by writing the libretti himself for his operas. Giuseppe Verdi on the other hand, referred primarily to works of world literature for his 26 operas.
Shakespeare and Schiller as models
Two of the greatest dramatists of all time were especially important for Verdi: William Shakespeare and Friedrich Schiller. Whereas Verdi’s settings of Macbeth, Othello and Falstaff all became world famous, the same is only partially true of the three early operas based on Schiller – Giovanna d’Arco, I Masnadieri and Luisa Miller. Verdi’s last opera project based on a text by the German poet, Don Carlos, which he composed between 1865 and 1867 and later revised several times, has meanwhile become one of his most important and impressive creations.
Conflict between reasons of state and personal happiness
The opera abounds in many different themes: the conflict between reasons
of state and personal happiness (Elizabeth, Don Carlos, King Philipp),
the dispute between church and state power (King, Grand Inquisitor), the
struggle for human rights and freedom of thought versus tyranny and suppression
(Marquis Posa, Carlos, the people of Flanders).
The principal characters are furthermore intricately linked with one another
through feelings of love or of friendship: Philipp and Carlos both love
Elizabeth; Carlos is loved not only by Elizabeth but also by Princess
Eboli, and both the Infanta as well as his father find in Posa a person
they can trust.
Rudolf Hradil,
Piazza del Popolo, Rome, 1995
One of Verdi’s richest musical scores
This diversity of the subject matter is also reflected in one of the richest musical scores Verdi composed, containing as it does powerfully expressive arias and duets as well as the mystical choruses of the monks and the tremendous mass scene with the burning of the heretics. If we wanted to exemplify Verdi’s genius in a single act of the opera, we would only have to take the third act of Don Carlos: it begins with King Philipp’s great scene, the most powerful and at the same time loneliest man in the world. This devastating portrayal of emotions is followed immediately by the no less remarkable encounter between Philipp and the Grand Inquisitor.
High points of opera literature
But this is not all because with the quartet Elizabeth – Eboli – Posa – Philipp that ranks alongside the famous quartet from Rigoletto, and Eboli’s aria, Verdi brings in two further high points of operatic literature before the prison scene with the death of Posa brings the act to a moving end. In general it would be true to say that with his fourth last opera Verdi composed a musical drama that in the opera history of the 19th century is in many respects unique.
Alexander Odefey
Giuseppe Verdi
Don Carlo
Revival
Conductor Valery Gergiev
N.N.
(22.8.)
Staging, sets, costumes and lighting design based on the concept by Herbert
Wernicke (†)
Revival director Karin Voykowitsch
Chorus master Rupert Huber
Dramaturgy Albrecht Puhlmann
Filippo II Ferruccio Furlanetto
Don Carlos Johan Botha
Rodrigo, Marchese di Posa Dwayne Croft
Il Grande Inquisitore Kurt Rydl
Un Frate (Carlo V) Chester Patton
Elisabetta di Valois Adrianne Pieczonka
La Principessa Eboli Olga Borodina
(22.8.) Elisabetta Fiorillo
Tebaldo Martina Janková
Una voce dal cielo L’ubica Vargicová
Il Conte di Lerma John Nuzzo
Un Araldo Reale Roberto Iuliano
Deputati Fiamminghi
Markus Eiche
Lauri Vasar
Günther Groissböck
Hiroyuki Ijichi
Hannes Lichtenberger
Friedrich Springer
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Vienna Philharmonic
Grosses Festspielhaus
Rudolf Hradil, Viktor-Emanuel-Denkmal,
Rome, 1993
Premiere
Saturday 2 August 6.30 p.m.
Further performances
Wednesday 13 August 6.30 p.m.
Sunday 17 August 6.30 p.m.
Friday 22 August 6.30 p.m.
Monday 25 August 5.30 p.m.
Wednesday 27 August 6.30 p.m.
Tickets are available from the Ticket Office of the
Salzburg Festival in the following price categories:
€ 22 / 45 / 65 / 90 / 135 / 205 / 270 / 340
Telephone: 0043 662 8045-500
Telefax: 0043 662 8045-555
E-mail: info@salzburgfestival.at