The coup de grace came in two installments, both involving Rodrigue. Installment One: At least for this role, Dupuis flaunts a Mohawk. It’s just the severe, straight-ahead type, nothing Gothy. Is Rodrigue not only a revolutionary activist for the oppressed of Flanders, but, additionally, an SJW for the Indigenous Peoples of North America? Was this quite à la mode at the court of Philip II? Is it a personal statement on the part of the singer, not the character, a My-Hair-Myself assertion? And by the way, did the Met’s officer for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (don’t see one listed! better get one, quick!) check in on the cultural-appropriation implications here? A Montrealer should know better, after that Le Page/Native American contretemps a while back. Or was he trying to show solidarity? Whatever the reason, the choice is not artistically defensible—and art is supposed to be the stock-in-trade here. Judging from the reaction to this in the reviews (none), I gather it’s one of those things we’re not supposed to notice.

I need to preface Installment Two with a brief Q & A, for which I shall provide both Q and A. Q1: Is it conceivable that a relationship between two riled-up male friends like Carlos and Rodrigue might, in addition to its heroic, manly-bro aspect, contain a homoerotic element? A1: Sure. Q2: Is it possible that such a homoerotic element was an intended part of these characters’ friendship, and meant to be suggested in its playing, by a) Friedrich Schiller, foremost poet, dramatist, and philosophical essayist of German Romanticism, author of the play on which the opera is based? A2a: I am open to instruction, but I rate this as highly unlikely. Or by b) Joseph François Méry and Camille Du Locle, the opera’s librettists? A2b: Can’t say—I don’t know much about them. If present, would remain unacknowledged, I’d assume. Or by c) Giuseppe Verdi, composer of the opera, and somehow latent in his music? A2c: Would you like your head handed to you? Q3: All this unlikelihood notwithstanding, is it perfectly cool for receptors of the work so inclined to take this homoerotic element as a subliminal aspect of the stage relationship, to identify with that and derive some of their emotional investment with Don Carlo(s) from that? A3: Of course. Such readings are always the receptor’s prerogative.

Now: if you know Don Carlo(s) at all, you will know that its ending, back in the cloister of San Yuste as in Act II, Scene 1, has always been hard to believably stage. As Philip’s guards and officials of the Holy Office close in on the defiant Carlo(s), the monk we saw and heard in that earlier scene, now revealed as the living spirit of Charles V, enfolds his grandson in his royal mantle and pulls him into the safety of the cloister. It is precipitous, and requires the acceptance of a supernatural intrusion into the earthly drama. Still: Verdi’s music for it, provided there is some thrill in the voices (the monk reiterating his pronouncement from the earlier scene, Philip exclaiming “Mon père!”/”Mio padre!” on the top F-sharp and Elisabeth “Oh Ciel!” on the high B) can be hair-raising, and is, unquestionably, an end. True enough, though, that no one has ever been unconditionally satisfied with it. But: