The Fourth of July with a Drawing and Don Carlo

I am working on a slow drawing today. The basic design is complete and I am filling in the details. As I work I listen to music. Today I listen to Verdi’s Don Carlo. Don Carlo is probably Verdi’s most complex and ingenious operas. Set against the infamous Spanish Inquisition, it is also his darkest and most menacing.

In times of trouble, such as what Americans face today, I often seek both solace and understanding in art. I do so because although some come very close, the talking heads in the news media never seem to get it quite right. Then I find the answer in art - in the greatness of Don Carlo. There was one particular scene in this opera that so chillingly encapsulates all that happens in love, rejection, vengeance and the abrogation of humanity in favor of fanatic ideology. This is the scene of Filippo’s (King Phillip) aria and then duet with The Grande Inquisitore. In previous scences, we come to know of the engagement of King Phillip’s son, Don Carlo, to the princess of France. The King, however, decides to break that engagement and marry the princess himself. That does not go particularly well, especially since this is opera.

Before the curtain opens the music is sublime, plaintive and sad. The scene opens with King Phillip alone at his desk in a dark room. He is crying piteously about being a lonely old man with a young wife who does not love him. It is a heart wrenching scene and almost makes the listener cry in sympathy (this listener does), as Phillip describes the sad look of his wife, his nights alone in bed. His bed a crypt. We are wrenched inside as well, because who has not known the sting of rejection and isolation?

Then the scene changes. Almost as if summoned telepathically by Phillip’s sorrow, The Grande Inquisitore is at his door. The mood is altered from one of sadness to one of menace. If ever music captured evil, it is that terrible sound of string basses and horns that accompanies the entry of the Inquisitore through the immense black doors of Phillip’s chambers - flung open seemingly on their own like the gates of Hell. It chills one to the bone.

The Inquisitore is the personification of irrational fanaticism, literally blind as a metaphor to his blindness to reason. His eyes are black and lifeless voids as he asks if the King is present. The King acknowledges that he is present and had summoned this terrible visitor. Then to our horror, we see Phillip’s deportment change from one slighted in love to one bent on revenge. This is all the more horrible for me in that I cannot make that cognitive shift from pity to repugnance quickly enough as Phillip is now actively engaged in plotting with the Grande Inquisitore to kill his only son and rival, Don Carlo. And that is the genius of Don Carlo - in that we know in that instant how easy it is to shift from rejection to hatred, from victim to victimizer.

But that is when it dawned upon me that this is also where we are at in my country. How devastating it is to think that a collective sorrow would summon evil. But how often has this been the case in history? Many social historians contend, for instance, that the social and economic strain of Weimar Germany ushered in Hitler’s Germany. Tyrants sniff out discontent and use it to their advantage. How easy it is then, for them to sink their talons in to those who cry for help.

At the end of what is probably one of the most moving scenes in opera, King Phillip’s last line, after the Grande Inquisitore departs, is "The crown bows to the altar." Governance submits to blind fanaticism. It is a cautionary tale that perhaps can only best be represented by such an enduring art form. To see for oneself, here is the link to the scene in question from Verdi’s Don Carlo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph6p1Mtpp18&list=RDPh6p1Mtpp18#t=0   I will keep listening as I work on my drawing. Perhaps there will be some surprises when I complete this woman in front of a quilt.