Don Carlos (play)
Encyclopedia
Don Carlos is a historical tragedy in five acts by Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

; it was written between 1783 and 1787 and first produced in Hamburg in 1787. The title character is Carlos, Prince of Asturias and the play as a whole is loosely modeled on historical events in the 16th century under the reign of King Philip II of Spain
Philip II of Spain
Philip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....

.

Opera adaptations

Several opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

s have been composed on the basis of the play:
  • 1844 opera by Michael Costa
    Michael Costa (conductor)
    Sir Michael Andrew Angus Costa was an Italian-born conductor and composer who achieved success in England.-Biography:He was born in Naples as Michaele Andrea Agniello Costa, to a family, according to some, of Sephardic stock...

     (libretto Leopold Tarentini, London)
  • 1847 opera by Pasquale Bona
    Pasquale Bona
    Pasquale Bona was an Italian composer. He studied music in Palermo. He composed a number of operas, including one based on the Schiller play that would later inspire Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos...

     (libretto Giorgio Giacchetti, Milan)
  • 1850 opera by Antonio Buzzolla
    Antonio Buzzolla
    Antonio Buzzolla was an Italian composer and conductor. A native of Adria, he studied in Venice, and later worked with Gaetano Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante. He composed five operas, but was better known in his lifetime for ariettas and canzonettas in the Venetian dialect...

     (libretto Francesco Maria Piave
    Francesco Maria Piave
    Francesco Maria Piave was an Italian opera librettist who was born in Murano in the lagoon of Venice, during the brief Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. His career spanned over twenty years working with many of the significant composers of his day...

    , Venice)
  • 1862 opera by Vincenzo Moscuzza
    Vincenzo Moscuzza
    Vincenzo Moscuzza was an Italian composer. Born in Syracuse, Sicily, he was the son of composer Luigi Moscuzza and his initial musical training was from his father. He later studied at the Naples Conservatory with Saverio Mercadante...

     (libretto Leopold Tarentini, Naples)
  • 1867 & 1884 Don Carlos and Don Carlo
    Don Carlos
    Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...

     by Giuseppe Verdi
    Giuseppe Verdi
    Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

     (libretto Joseph Méry
    Joseph Méry
    Joseph Méry was a French writer.Méry was born at Marseille. An ardent romanticist, he collaborated with Auguste Barthélemy in many of his satires and wrote a great number of stories, now forgotten...

     & Camille du Locle
    Camille du Locle
    Camille du Locle was a French theatre director and a librettist. He was born in Orange, France. From 1862 he served as assistant to his father-in-law, Émile Perrin at the Paris Opéra, moving in 1870 to the Opéra-Comique....

    , Paris, Italian translation by Achille de Lauzières and Angelo Zanardini, Milan)

English translations and stage adaptations

Reprint of an 1872 translation. Reprint of a 1996 translation (out-of-print). Poulton's adaptation was directed by Michael Grandage in a well-reviewed staging. MacDonald's adaptation was first staged in Edinburgh in 1995. It is a verse translation in iambic pentameter; Mary Carole McCauley wrote, "MacDonald creates a sense of ease within his 10-syllable metric lines by using modern idioms, and what the translation lacks in a certain lush richness, it may make up for in accessibility."

Influence on English-language literature and film

Jeffrey High has found influences of Schiller's plays on the screenplays for several Hollywood films, and in particular suggests an close correspondence between Don Carlos and the screenplay for Star Wars
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...

 (1977).

Further reading

Review of a 2004 production in Sheffield, England of Mike Poulton
Mike Poulton
Mike Poulton is an English translator and adapter of classic plays for contemporary audiences.Poulton began his career in 1995 with Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Ivan Turgenev's Fortune's Fool, which were staged at the Chichester Festival Theatre, the former with Derek Jacobi, the latter with...

's adaptation from the German, along with an extended discussion of play's history.
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