DON CARLOS





“Each human being has a right to his own thoughts, a free conscience and freedom. This right includes the freedom to change his religion or conviction, as well as the right to manifest his religion or conviction alone or with others in a public gathering through the teaching, practice, divine service and performance of a rite.”
    (General declaration on Human Rights of the United Nations)

Freedom of thought, conscience and religion—an elementary reason and human right! But history, like modern events, shows that this statement often lies very far from reality. What is the real and deeper meaning of religion? Unfortunately, there have always been aggressive and totalitarian movements which take an offensive stance. Through the conviction that the “modern world” is corrupt in its foundation and must be newly formed or maintained in its old form, results in many cases in the madness of exterminating those who are dissident. Fanatical belief wishes to subjugate others with its intolerance and is firmly convinced of its superiority and right to rule.

Carlos, trapped in the gloomy walls of his era, looks and longs for the true fundamental idea of religion: love. Raised in a crumbling state in which religion meant increasing subjugation and absolute power, the term “love” no longer exists. The church’s long decrepit and reform-needy fundamental idea has been overtaken by state power. A punishing, righteous God rules over man’s basic needs. Politics has submitted itself completely to the monolithic power of the church and its sacrosanct belief. Walls are put up, books are burned, Jews, Moslems, Protestants and dissidents are persecuted and finally tortured. Is that religion?

The “love of a punishing God” is purchased through letters of indulgence and collecting reliquaries, by denouncing one’s neighbour in order to assure one’s own survival. The staged executions elevate the corporate feeling of the masses to undefined vastness. As long as one is not caught up in it oneself, the thought of singularity in a fanatical strife of faith triumphs. Was that really just in the 16th century?

What a peril for Princess Eboli in the opera when she attempts to charm a flicker of light into the bleak, petrified everyday life with her erotic Moorish “Song of the Veils”! The word “Saracens” that she makes use of (a discriminating term for Arabs and other Moslem states) points nonetheless to a general rejection of other cultures. Racism? An infringement and lack of respect towards to foreign world?

Over all reigns the gaping gravity of a cheerless heritage symbolized by the figure of Carlos V who, in our stage production, is the primary character. Carlos V who would be the Don Quixote of the dying empire if the delivery is true, is made ridiculous by Rabelais in the form of the have-not and manipulating King Picrochole,. In that he defends the realm, he defends Europe and the Roman legacy which the Catholic church has raked in.

“No other monarchy can be compared with the Roman Empire, the very one that Jesus Christ himself embraced. Unfortunately, it is hardly a shadow of what it once was, but I hope that with the help of the countries and allies God has loaned me to revive its past glory.” (Carlos V at the first conference at Worms)

Undoubtedly, he could not perceive how it was possible that the Roman Empire (a historical deed dating from the Christmas Eve mass of 800 and coronation of Charlemagne) was just an empty framework, a useless reminder of a continuously revived political and religious concept. He simply did not get it.
“…I lived in vain madness, lived in arrogance and sin…”  (the monk Carlos V, Don Carlo -- Verdi)

The struggle against the reformation was the greatest mistake in the life of Carlos V. Not only did he not succeed in becoming Lord of the Heretics; the reformation consistently crisscrossed all his plans.

“A single friar who goes against a thousand years of Christendom must be wrong. Therefore I am convinced to risk my lands, my friends, my body, my blood, my life and my soul. I want to take action against him as against a cursed heretic.”
 (CarlosV on 17 April 1521 at the conference in Worms)

On his deathbed he passed on to his son the duty of continuing the battle which caused his defeat. All heretics in his state are to be exposed and punished, without exception, grace or sympathy because “if you do this, you will have my blessing and the Lord will protect all your endeavours.”

The difficult and inhuman “legacy” buries every germinating thought of improvement and draws itself over the life of Don Carlos and the entire production like a tenacious slime.
A duel of life and death with Protestantism and all other-minded thinkers resembles a Corsican vendetta.

A kingdom like that established with Philip II regency of the Spanish throne was indeed still a kingdom the sun never set on, but one whose weak points had long become visible and the powers that would lead to a final collapse were already in place.

And there was a third legacy. The physical and mental weaknesses procreated through the closed circuit of marriages between blood relatives led to the downfall of this condemned dynasty.

The gift of our ancestors: a knapsack full of corpses. Freedom and ease? Structured, deadlocked traditions packaged as “love” by our fathers. Is that humanity?

The grandfather persecutes Carlos. His own collapse is catapulted upon the grandson as an unavoidable certainty. Oversensitive Carlos becomes a prisoner of this destructive legacy of senselessness as if trapped in a delusion of grandeur. Caught up in a world in which death counts more than life, he looks for humanity, support and warmth. He looks for a father and mother and the basic need for devotion. Finally, he realizes through Posa’s death that he only possessed the ability to dissolve the burden of his legacy and bring life back into the world. By then, however, it is too late.
(“Earthly harm and pains penetrate the cloister’s walls. Death is first to put an end to the wild battle in the heart” Monk Carlos V, Don Carlos -- Verdi)

Without even experiencing fatherly love, Philip finds no access to his beseeching son. He, too, struggles for fatherly love, finally seeking a replacement in the fanatical question of faith imposed upon him by his own father. What he finds is coldness and sorrow. Through his great passion for collecting the reliquaries that fill his attics (a historical fact of Philip II), he obtains confirmation from the church of his soul’s peace of mind in the afterlife, but no peace in the here and now.

“God put his own son on the cross for us!” (Inquisitor, Don Carlos -- Verdi)

He assumes the petrified desires of his supreme father and thus becomes externally a fundamentalist warrior of the faith, even when he inwardly snaps as a result.

“I will not change my behaviour, even if I have the entire world against me”.
(Philip II, 1565)

“As soon as he bestowed me with the crown and my people, I praised God by putting all heretics to death by fire and sword!
(Philip II, Don Carlos – Verdi)

The only bright spot for father and son is called Elisabeth---the  epitome of warmth and liveliness. Yet even she loses her joy of life in the stifling odour of decay. The sacrifice of her own self-abandonment, offered for the peace and freedom of her people, soon shows its senselessness. Love lost, she vegetates away in self-imposed patterns. Not even her noble intentions can appease the love-starved Philip. Frantic jealousy gives the father-son relationship a final mortal blow.

The second foothold for father and son lies in the sensation of being able to feel “friendship”---something which is unattainable in a state functioning like this. Struggling to survive and denunciation are on the daily roster. Posa’s strength and love of mankind shake up the old structure and allow new feelings of hope and confidence to enter. Don Carlos holds to Posa’s thoughts on improving the world and freedom. These seem to give him power and the idea that he can break out of the strangle hold of  the firm, dogmatically fixed and incrusted image of the world and mankind of his imprisoned father.

Even Philip’s firm foundations are brought into doubt by Posa’s emotionality. The mask of the untouchable Father—in both senses of the word---begins to break down as he is deprived of the last ray of warmth.

“As I was passing through the dark days of my life I sought here at court, what I had long wished for in vain: a person, an open heart.”
(Philip, Don Carlos -- Verdi)
“What is a person to do...? You wish to break the holy yoke of the church which encircles the earth with your weak hand. Remember your duty...”
(Inquisitor, Don Carlos -- Verdi)

In its original form a symbol of energy with a twofold connection of diametrically juxtaposed points as the emblem of the unity of extremes (for example, of heaven and earth), of composition, and measure, the cross is used as a tool of murder.

What an irony that it is found as a symbol in practically every culture in religion, art and architecture. The cross stands for the connection between the four points of the compass and the four winds which coordinate all life on earth and therefore encompasses the equalization of all religions. Tolerance, respect and ….love!

Four stubborn beasts pull the global carriage. You rein them in; they are one under your bridling. Thus Rueckert perceives a thought by Rumi (an Islamic mystic of the 12th century), in which the four beasts of the biblical visions are combined with the four elements of the Apocalypse whose worldly power must bow before God, the One and Only.

In earliest architecture one knew that crosses, squares, a multiple integral of four and spirals have the energy to suppress over great distances while creating favourable conditions for the safety of mankind and sanctities. This can be used just as effectively for negative purposes—as was known during the Nazi regime---where the swastika was used as an oppressive symbol of power.

Here, the cross becomes an idol, a superior dream, in which everyone seeks but does not find shelter because the basic concept of religion has converted itself into an obsession for power. It appears like a bloody sword—rejecting, cold and unkind---sold like a penitential robe to the believer. It stands between man and his search for love. Oppression and death have put themselves before life.

The struggle for freedom and human warmth is threaded through the entire piece, becoming ever stronger and more passionate. That freedom degenerates into an empty shell becomes more meaningful.

The cross in all its inhumanity stands between the players and forms a certain dependency on the church’s warped ideal of supremacy. War instead of altruism. Fanaticism instead of grace. Death instead of vitality.