Maria Stuarda

The second panel in Donizetti’s triptych of Tudor operas, Maria Stuarda, faced a far longer and more winding road to success than instant hit Anna Bolena. Problems with censors, battles between leading ladies and substantial rewriting—even a completely different title—eventually saw the work we know today premiered in Milan in 1835. The opera adapts Friedrich Schiller’s play Mary Stuart, which famously stages a fictional encounter and confrontation between Elizabeth I and her cousin Mary Queen of Scots. The plot hinges on the tension between the Catholic exile Mary and the Protestant Queen Elizabeth, rivals here not just for the Crown, but also for the love of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Musically, we see Donizetti starting to loosen the corset strings of convention in Maria Stuarda, shifting the emphasis away from self-contained arias and increasingly onto longer, more organic structures, duets and—especially—recitative. The famous Act I confrontation (Act II in some editions) is a vivid example; so shocking, so significant are the words (and insults) exchanged that Donizetti sets much of the scene in conversational back-and-forth that’s as close as opera gets to spoken theatre. Other highlights include the impassioned prayer Mary leads the chorus in during the final scene “Deh! Tu di un’umile preghiera”, and Act I’s string of duets, all building musically to the moment Elizabeth and Mary finally come face-to-face.