DON CARLO at Teatr Wielki - Opera Narodowa, Moniuszko Auditorium

If king Henry Valois had not escaped from Poland his daughter would not have married Philip II king of Spain but Ivan the Terrible Tsar of Russia. And Ivan Jr would have fallen in love with her just like infante Don Carlos did in Spain. Schiller’s drama and Verdi’s opera would have been enacted in different sets, but following the same plot, as both the tsar and the king ordered their sons‘ killings. Fate’s finger pointed out a stage career for Escurial, instead of just as grim Kremlin and for the Grand Inquisitor, instead of Maluta Skuratov - the commander of Ivan the Terrible’s secret police „oprichnina“. But was it possible for the Oedipal complex to emerge in the Russian context, which was so visible in the prince’s love to his step-mother, as well as the appeal to freedom so audible in marquise Poza’s tirades? Schiller had pointed out both and connected both with Spain for ever. Verdi faithfully followed his discovery. That is why empress Eugenia, wife of emperor Napoleon III, a Spaniard and a bigot, le t the opera house furious. It was not her Spain but ours.