Music swells and drapery lifts, thick with the odor of imperial sanctity. In the murk, a figure enters in worship or contemplation, then launches into a breakneck aria of praise.

It could be opera; it could even be "Phantom of the Opera"; but actually it's Spain. It's the prose of "Don Carlos," Schiller's great organ blast declaration of the high demands (and severe costs) of Romantic idealism.

It is a ravishing start to a turbulent, disturbing play. The sets are limited by choice, combining with gorgeous costumes, highly theatrical lights and directorial bravado such as you expect on the Carnegie Mellon mainstage, but not in its Rauh studio. This is not simply an MFA project, but a full-out, ambitious, largely successful version of Schiller's infuriating masterpiece.

The story, historically based but fictionalized by Schiller and further adapted by Jason Williamson and director Ed Sylvanus Iskander, centers on the conflict between Philip II and his heir. Philip, the 16th-century arch-conservative, conspired with the anti-Reformation Catholic church to freeze Spain at its imperial height, whether stoking the fires of the Inquisition, launching an Armada against heretical England or imprisoning that heir, Don Carlos.

Whatever he was in history, Don Carlos is turned by Schiller into the new man, the apostle of individualism, with its inevitable suggestions of Renaissance, Reformation and rebellion.

Think Hamlet, as Schiller certainly did. You can't avoid it, with the similar Oedipal/dynastic themes and meddling courtiers. But this is not so much Shakespeare's Hamlet as the proto-Romantic noble sufferer, beset by reactionary realpolitik and achieving the dream of sacrifice for a higher cause.

In the play, Carlos (Adam Berry) actually turns out to be pretty irritating, always closer to tears than action, which suggests Schiller understood Romanticism's malady as well as its appeal. The fascinating figure is Philip (Nic Cory), momentarily tantalized by independent sympathies but retreating into the safe refuge of Church-sanctioned rigor. Then there's the true revolutionary, Posa (Will Brill), Carlos' boyhood friend, who comes on like a fanatic ideologue, demanding the prince's unquestioning trust as he plays with his life.

There are also the women, Philip's French queen (Sonja Field), named Elizabeth, which is ironic, because he had been briefly married to Bloody Mary, elder half-sister of the great English Elizabeth, and the Princess Eboli (Laura Lee Mixon), the vengeful woman scorned. And there are the famous courtiers, such as the bloody Duke of Alva (Tristan Farmer), and the conniving prelates (Liam Rhodes, Shu-nan Chu)

It's a big cast, 16 strong, multiplied by some doubling. And Schiller's four-hour epic has been cut to 2 1/2.

Whatever the strengths of the acting and of the English text, which are both considerable but sometimes awkwardly contemporary, in both cases, the stars are the design (especially Devon Allen's lights) and direction. What a shame such a show has only five performances in a small theater.