Don Carlo Tickets
Nicholas Hytner's production of Verdi’s mighty historical opera evokes the passion, violence and religious repression of Renaissance Spain
Date & Time
Show ended
Photos & Videos
About Don Carlo
Elizabeth of Valois is promised in marriage to Don Carlos of Spain, as part of a peace treaty between the two kingdoms. They meet and fall in love – but no sooner have they declared their love than news comes that the terms of the treaty have changed: Elizabeth is to marry Carlos’s father Philip instead. Politics and religion are dangerously entwined in Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo. It is based on the 1787 play by Friedrich Schiller and was first performed at the Paris Opéra in 1867. Verdi made extensive revisions to the opera over the following 20 years. This production by Nicholas Hytner follows the five-act 1886 version – Verdi’s final revision of the work. Don Carlo contains a host of vividly drawn characters, depicted through some of Verdi’s most complex music. The chilling Grand Inquisitor imposes his will in thunderous, dark-toned music, while the revolutionary Marquis of Posa sings a stirring duet with Don Carlos in praise of friendship and freedom. And in Eboli and Elizabeth, Verdi created two of his most sympathetic heroines. The Royal Opera’s staging provides a powerful backdrop, and conjures up the Renaissance grandeur of 16th-century France and Spain.