Don Carlo: “Per me giunto … Ah! Io morrò ”

Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa, lives dangerously. A fervent but impulsive idealist whose mission it is to free Flanders from Spanish opression, he not only befriends the Spanish King’s son, Don Carlos, who shares his libertarian ideals, but also pretends to be an ally of Philip II himself, who very definitely does not. It is a situation – made all the more difficult by a complex web of love intrigues – that Rodrigo cannot survive. The crunch comes when he has to choose between his own life and that of Carlos, who has been imprisoned as a traitor. Heroically taking the blame upon himself, Rodrigo appears in Carlos’s cell to explain to him what he has done and makes his movingly selfless farewell in a short aria “Per me giunto” – and only just in time, since a shot rings out and Rodrigo falls to the ground. His dying words “Ah! Io morrò, ma lieto in core…” remind Carlos of his duty to Flanders.

Although, incidentally, the opera is regularly performed in an Italian translation as Don Carlo, it was commissioned by the Paris Opéra and first performed there in French, as Don Carlos, in 1867. Verdi made several, often extensive revisions thereafter but Rodrigo’s “Per me giunto” (or Rodrigue’s “C’est mon jour suprême”) has always remained intact.