verdi opera from a play by friedrich schiller

Jennifer Jackson's study, while escaping the pedantry of looking at all the influences on Schiller, follows in detail the variations created by St-Réal, Schiller, and Verdi, revisiting different strands of the characters and situations while valid, and aiming at clarity, this procedure has the limitation that we are never allowed to leave behind one text for another. Added to these settings, there is a nice framing apparent: Parisian grand opera was inaugurated with Rossini's Guillaume Tell (1829), based on Schiller's play of 1804, while what John Rosselli calls 'the masterpiece of French grand opera' came with Don Carlos, another French transcription of a German play, composed by an Italian (John Rosselli, The Life of Verdi (Cambridge, 2000), 147).

Verdi had, of course, already set Schiller's first play, Die Räuber (I masnadieri) and his second, Kabale und Liebe (Luisa Miller), and a later play of 1801, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, which became Giovanna d'Arco, all works of the 1840s. St-Réal's Histoire led to Thomas Otway's tragedy Don Carlos, Prince of Spain (1676)-as St-Réal as an historian also wrote the material that Otway used for Venice Preserved-but the lasting impact of his work was felt first on Schiller (1759-1805), whose plot, in his third play Don Carlos (1787), follows St-Réal closely, and later, via Schiller, on Verdi and his librettists, Méry and Du Locle, in 1867. Philip's third marriage was to Elizabeth of Valois (1544-68), under the terms of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1599) though she had initially expected to marry Don Carlos, the idea of Don Carlos being in love with her and Elizabeth with him appears first in the AbbéSt-Réal's Histoire de Dom Carlos (1672), a nouvelle centring on love and intrigue, which invented Posa as a go-between, to be murdered by Philip when he was rumoured to be in love with Elizabeth.

thesis, it discusses the literary and operatic transformations of Don Carlos-as these originated in the events surrounding Philip II of Spain (1527-98), the son of Charles V (1500-58), and Philip's psychotic son by his first wife, Maria Manuela, Princess of Portugal, the Infante Don Carlos (1545-68). Jennifer Jackson has written an intelligent, informative, and well-researched and welcome book, one aware of literary and critical theory, and of both music and literature.

Verdi opera from a play by friedrich schiller