He is twenty-three years old and has not yet done anything for his immortality.

When Don Carlos, the Spanish crown prince, delivers speeches, things get pretty grand.

World history is calling him.

There is no greater suffering than his on earth.

Everything in and around him is either heavenly or hellish.

He is constantly calling on humanity.

He also constantly says “O”: O who knows;

O, too good;

O you good spirits;

Oh, it's you!;

Oh, now all is well again;

Oh, the idea was childish;

O, if what my heart tells me comes true, O, do not hesitate;

and of course: Oh God!

And O Roderich.

These are just the Os of Don Karlos during the first two appearances of Schiller's drama.

Jurgen Kaube

Editor.

  • Follow I follow

In his Stuttgart production by David Bösch, however, the story of Carlos begins less grandly and also not with the famous entrance “The beautiful days in Aranjuez / Are now over”, which Schiller opens the scene in the royal gardens.

With Bösch, Don Karlos steps to the edge of the stage instead and says: "I have a lot of misfortune with my mothers", which triggers the first justified laughter from the audience.

How many mothers can you have?

Such patchwork is a problem

So Don Carlos is after immortality and at the same time a mother's son.

He has two.

His biological mother died when he was born, he was in love with the French stepmother Elisabeth von Valois before his father took her as his wife.

Such patchwork is of course a problem, and the tragedy takes its course.

Elisabeth also loves Carlos, her husband Philip is a tyrant who not only doesn't tolerate it for Catholic reasons, but in turn pursues a lady-in-waiting who in turn loves in vain Carlos, his friend, the Marquis of Posa, that Roderich, the liberation of Flanders of Spanish rule, to which the Duke of Alba, who likes to be harsh, and the Catholic Church and the monarch have not the slightest inclination.

So we have a family drama (son loves stepmother and would therefore rather not be a son), a domination drama (who tells the boss the truth about the wife?), a political-theological drama (Are people bad and therefore have to be oppressed, right? is he a hope for the future?) and a courtly drama (What is the best way to intrigue in favor of Flanders or Madrid under these confusing circumstances?).

David Bösch opts for the family drama.

His protagonists lack any courtly tension, the Grand Inquisitor comes from the off, the cross is just a backdrop, nobody wears it in the drama.

The actors walk across the largely empty stage as if they were across a schoolyard or a sidewalk.

There is no choreography.

Schiller's iambics are spoken carelessly.

Above all, Felix Strobel as Don Karlos with make-up eyes in Berlin - "Now it's finally here" - uninhibitedly go ahead.

Matthias Leja as King of Spain looks like an inmate of the creative industries in a turtleneck and glitter suit, the Marquis von Posa has dyed his hair blonde, probably out of sympathy for Flanders, and to David Müller he looks like the spokesman of a movement for historical progress, which on is already very proud of his art of formulation.