Preview: Poor King Philip receives yet another unwelcome early-morning visitor

by Ken

I've thought of another loose end I'd really hate not to tie up: our gradual traversal of the great scene in King Philip's study in Act IV (Act III of the four-act version) of Verdi's Don Carlos.

We've already covered the Spanish king's bleak pre-dawn monologue ("Verdi's King Philip -- a man in crisis," January 2013), where he makes clear that he knows his young wife, the French princess Elisabeth, doesn't love him and never loved him, the proceeds to pretend that his only problem is that even royalty doesn't give people to see into human hearts, where only God can see. And then we've seen the 90-year-old blind Grand Inquisitor pay a just-at-dawn call on the king ("'The pride of the king withers before the pride of the priest!' (Verdi's King Philip)," March 2013) to take advantage of his sleep-deprived, half-crazed state of mind to bully him into submission.

Tonight's brief exchange (whose significance to me personally I'll explain tomorrow) comes after the king has received his next early-morning visitor: the queen, demanding justice for the theft of her jewel box.

VERDI: Don Carlos, Act IV (III), Scene 1: Elisabeth, "Ben lo sapete"

ELISABETH: You know it well: Once my hand
was promised to your son.
Now I belong to you, submissive to God,
but I am immaculate as the lily.
And now there is suspicion
of the honor of Elisabeth . . .
there is doubt about me . . .
And the person who commits the outrage is the king.
KING PHILIP: You speak to me too boldly!
You think me weak
and seem to defy me;
weakness in me
can turn to fury.
Tremble then,
for you, for me!

Eleanor Steber (s), Elisabeth; Jerome Hines (bs), King Philip II; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Kurt Adler, cond. Live performance, Mar. 5, 1955

Sena Jurinac (s), Elisabeth; Cesare Siepi (bs), King Philip II; Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Silvio Varviso, cond. Live performance, June 15, 1968

Gundula Janowitz (s), Elisabeth; Nicolai Ghiaurov (bs), King Philip II; Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Horst Stein, cond. Live performance, Oct. 25, 1970


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

The whole of the brief but crucial Philip-Elisabeth scene.

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Preview: "I still see her looking in silence at my white hair" -- King Philip, in "Don Carlos"

Ferruccio Furlanetto as King Philip in his study in Don Carlos at the Met

Io la rivedo ancor, contemplar triste in volto
il mio crin bianco il dì che qui di Francia venne.
No, amor per me non ha, amor per me non ha.

I still see her again, contemplating with a sad look
my white mane the day that she came here from France.
No, she doesn't love me, she doesn't love me.

Jerome Hines (bs), King Philip II; Orchestra of the Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), Fernando Previtali, cond. Live performance, Sept. 2, 1962

Ferruccio Furlanetto (bs), King Philip II; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine, cond. Sony, recorded Apr.-May 1992

by Ken

Yes, yes, I know Sunday Classics is supposed to be on hiatus. Let's just call this a hiatus from the hiatus. We've got stuff to deal with, even while I plow ahead with the laborious task of importing Sunday Classics posts into the new stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken" blog at sundayclassicswithken.blogspot.com. (At last count we were all the way back to July 2012!)

To get back to it, here is the same passage from Don Carlos which we just heard in the standard Italian translation, only now in the original French, which, let me remind you, is the only language Verdi ever worked on this opera in. In the bits of it we're going to be hearing tonight, the differences aren't enormous sense-wise, but I've included the originals so you have a chance to see how much more naturally the syntax flows in the French.

Je la revois encor, regardant en silence
mes cheveux blancs le jour qu'elle arriva de France.
Non, elle ne m'aime pas, elle ne m'aime pas.

I still see her again, looking in silence at
my white hair the day that she arrived from France.
No, she doesn't love me, she doesn't love me.

José van Dam (bs-b), King Philip II; Orchestre de Paris, Antonio Pappano, cond. EMI, recorded live at the Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris), Mar. 10-16, 1996

SEE, I GOT THIS IDEA THAT WE COULD JUXTAPOSE
THESE TWO PASSAGES FROM PHILIP'S MONOLOGUE

The thing is, this week I helped a friend sort through and arrange his CD collection, making it possible to pull the stuff he had duplicated. As a result I came away with a pile of stuff that I didn't have, which included this broadcast performance of King Philip's monologue by Jerome Hines from Buenos Aires's Teatro Colón. And as it happens . . . .