Had it not been for King Henry VIII, England would have remained a Catholic country and the course of English, and later British, history would have been very different. Had it not been for that king’s messy sex life and the entanglements of the House of Tudor, there wouldn’t have been two first cousins once removed, one named Elizabeth and the other Mary, who ended up being at war with each other. Had it not been for the German dramatist Friedrich Schiller’s play Maria Stuart, the Italian composer Donizetti would have not been inspired to create an opera with the same title, though he did have two other attempts at engaging with the Tudor period (Anna Bolena and Roberto Devereux).
Both Schiller and Donizetti falsify history. The two queens never actually met, though they had a correspondence stretching over many years, but what is potentially more dramatic than an actual physical confrontation? Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie do precisely that in the 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots. The second scene of Donizetti’s first act (in some versions actually the second act) focuses on the fictional encounter in the grounds of Fotheringhay Castle. There should be no surprise about the composer’s real sympathies. In his eyes and those of the Catholic Church, Elizabeth was Henry VIII’s illegitimate daughter who was finally excommunicated in 1570, best summed up in Maria’s shriek of “vil bastarda” during her confrontation with Elisabetta. Though, after months of historical procrastination, Elizabeth finally had her cousin executed, Mary’s revenge came when her son James VI became England’s James I in 1603.
Casting the two queens in the opera-house is always a tricky matter. Their vocal personalities need to be clearly defined. They can both be sung by sopranos, though in many cases the role of Elisabetta is sung by a mezzo. Not here though in this new production, the very first of this opera in Hamburg, directed by Karin Beier, for the Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho has long experience of singing Maria, and the Uzbekistani soprano Barno Ismatullaeva, winner of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 2017, whose roles include Butterfly and Desdemona, has the challenging task of matching Maria in vocal colour and intensity.
Beier’s production doesn’t seek to hide the tensions and conflicts within and between the two queens. To this end she employs doubles on stage to reinforce the idea of each woman as a private individual as well as in an official public role. She also sees the drama from a feminist point of view: both women are constantly under surveillance, controlled and manipulated by powerful and ambitious men. Had Beier left the idea of shadowing each queen with only one double, she would have fared much better than she did. Instead of showing a dual personality in conflict, she ends up having a fractured personality for both queens with a total of five doubles in action for each. This works only very occasionally. More effective is, for instance, when Elisabetta is put under duress by her Lord Chancellor to sign Maria’s death-warrant while one of her doubles kneels at the writing-desk to demonstrate how conflicted the monarch is. In the second scene of Act 1, before the actual confrontation, the carcass of a deer is pulled across the stage, into which Maria then plunges her hands only to reveal them covered in blood, an allusion to the many other lives she has on her conscience. Yet doubles subsequently appear from both sides pulling lifeless other doubles, which miraculously resurrect themselves soon after. This extreme fussiness in the staging is a classic example of gilding the lily.
Some of the action is entirely coherent. Thus, after Maria’s failed attempt to achieve clemency in the confrontation scene, she describes her cousin as a “base, lascivious harlot”, removing the crown from her in order to place it on her own head and reassert her rightful claims to the throne, before Elisabetta seizes it back. This insult works both ways: at the end of the first scene, one of Elisabetta’s doubles paints the words “Kill that whore” on a wall of the queen’s palace. The execution scene is a lesson in tastelessness. Beier has large lighting gantries descend in order to provide additional illumination for two cameramen who film the proceedings. Public executions were not uncommon in 16th century or even Victorian England, but this kind of 21st century voyeurism detracts from the inherent poignancy in the concluding stages of Donizetti’s work.
The sets by Amber Vandenhoeck are specifically designed to underpin the severity and brutal reality of the surroundings, dark and stark in their simplicity. Thus Elisabetta’s court resembles a prison compound, with upper vents to allow huggermugger observation. In turn, Fotheringhay is largely grey in colour. The costumes by Eva Dessecker owe their inspiration to a mixture of a Gabba look with power dressing from the 1980s and Renaissance designs. Not everything makes sense: platform shoes for Elisabetta do not enhance her regal presence.
Beier prefaces each act with a text in German spoken in front of the curtain by two of the doubles. The first is Mary’s very last letter sent to Elizabeth in December 1586; the second is Elizabeth’s reply to a parliamentary petition requesting the death sentence for Mary. Does this add anything more than what is already in the libretto? I don’t believe so.
However, what does work by way of amplification are the numerous video projections: not only the varying portraits of the two queens but also the way in which Maria’s guilt is further reinforced by having her hands emerge from a stream of blood, together with her humiliation as her head is shorn of all her hair prior to the execution.
This production is a vocal triumph for the two queens. The tradition of bel canto singing means that the voice is often unsupported, requiring unflagging evenness of line and considerable flexibility in negotiating the florid coloratura. At the same time beauty of tone cannot exclude depth of emotional expression. Jaho’s soft-edged opulence impressed from the start, with her first major aria “O nube! Che lieve per l’aria ti aggiri”, in which she addresses the cloud that lightly moves across the sky, floated exquisitely from a mostly supine position. Maximum vocal impact comes in one of the most stirring of Donizetti’s melodies, which he reserves for Maria’s final prayer to the God of mercy, “Deh! Tu di un umile preghiera il suono odi”. Here, Jaho was soulful without being larmoyant, alone with her fate yet underpinned by the excellent choral contribution. Throughout this opera Jaho conveyed the considerable range of emotion inherent in the role: near ecstasy rooted in her belief that Roberto, the Earl of Leicester, will intercede successfully on her behalf; initial disgust and haughty defiance displayed towards Elisabetta; grim defiance in her realisation that her life will not be spared. Her chest tones in particular had a resounding solidity to them.
No less impressive was Ismatullaeva as Elisabetta. The English queen commands the first act in the same way that her cousin commands the second, though here Beier has both queens involved in silent parades against each other on a central platform. Ismatullaeva’s powerful yet creamy voice with thrilling top notes left no doubt about her regal role. However, this absolute self-belief, present in her early cavatina, “Ah! Quando all’ara scorgemi”, as she ponders a French proposal of marriage, is quickly tempered by the elements of vacillation that she falls prey to, as in the cabaletta, “Tacete! Non posso risolvermi ancor”, when the liquorice-toned Albanian baritone Gezim Myshketa in the role of Cecil begins to exercise his malevolent influence. In her repeated exchanges with Myshketa, she reveals the inner anguish she feels at the need to end the life of a cousin and a sister queen.
Although Alexander Roslavets sang a warmly authoritative Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, I was less happy with Long Long’s assumption of the role of Roberto. The voice is technically secure and pliable, but it is on the thin side, and notwithstanding the occasional bursts of ardour I was less persuaded that this was a young nobleman torn between loyalty and adherence to two queens. Aebh Kelly’s mezzo, in the smaller role of Anna, contrasted well with the Scottish queen she served.
Italian conductors often have this kind of music in their blood. Antonino Fogliani directed a performance with buoyant rhythms, drawing lyrical warmth and sparkle from his splendid band of musicians, adding dramatic accents demanded in the score and a depth of sonority whenever the music moved into the minor mode.
Executions are always shocking. Recently, one of the UK’s commercial television channels screened a dramatisation of the events leading up to the trial of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged exactly seventy years ago. In Donizetti’s opera it is sobering to be confronted with what was for so many incontrovertible reality throughout the ages. It is a mark of our times that though we may not have eradicated violence and injustice, we now value human life more preciously than did our ancestors.
Alexander Hall
Maria Stuarda
Music by Gaetano Donizetti
Opera in two acts with a libretto by Giuseppe Bardari, based on Friedrich Schiller’s play Maria Stuart
Sung in Italian with English and German surtitles
Cast and production staff:
Elisabetta – Barno Ismatullaeva; Maria Stuarda – Ermonela Jaho; Anna – Aebh Kelly; Roberto – Long Long; Talbot – Alexander Roslavets; Cecil – Gezim Myshketa; Chorus of Hamburg State Opera, Chorus Director Eberhard Friedrich; Orchestra of Hamburg State Opera, Conductor Antonino Fogliani
Director – Karin Beier; Set Designer – Amber Vandenhoeck; Costumes – Eva Dessecker; Lighting – Annette ter Meulen; Video – Severin Renke; Dramaturgy – Rita Thiele
Hamburg State Opera, 16 March 2025
Top image: The cast of Maria Stuarda
All photos © Brinkhoff-Mögenburg
Further performances until 2 April