Don Karlos

“Give freedom of thought" is the Marquis of Posa's demand to King Philip II, ruler of the Spanish Empire. Posa wants to win his childhood friend Don Karlos for the Flanders freedom struggle. But the crown prince loves his young stepmother, the queen and wife of Philip. In the father's sphere of power, in a milieu of mistrust and fear in which everyone is trapped, his love must remain a secret. The Marquis, to whom the emotional Karlos confides, admonishes him to think politically, to extend his love for the Queen to the whole human race. But how can the utopia of freedom be realised in a despotic system that relies on violence and is geared only towards maintaining power and expansion? And Posa's will to freedom also increasingly threatens to turn into the terror of human happiness in the high frenzy of his political ambitions. Between family history, love intrigue and political state drama, the struggle for social ideals falls by the wayside. The wheel of history keeps turning like a millstone.