Lyric Opera 2019-2020 Issue 6 The Three Queens

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 28 Long may they reign: Donizetti’s glorious “Three Queens” By Roger Pines to produce passionate, achingly sincere expressiveness. You may be devoted to these three from what you’ve read (the amount of authoritative scholarly material on them is overwhelming) or how you’ve seen them portrayed onscreen by such brilliant actresses as Bette Davis, Glenda Jackson, Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren, and more recently Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie. If you pride yourself on everything you know about the period, it’s perhaps best to forget most of it, given the enormous liberties each libretto takes with historical accuracy. Certainly, though, we can declare that the operas remain absolutely true to the spirit of these women and do them full justice. Lyric’s presentation of “The Three Queens” places the operas not just in the order in which they were written, but in the order that the specific events of the operas took place: the executions of Anne in 1536, Mary in 1587, and 14 years later Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex. The physically and emotionally spent Queen Elizabeth I (Sondra Radvanovsky) in the final moments of Roberto Devereux , Metropolitan Opera, 2015|16 season. Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera The Tudor era has attracted opera composers for nearly two centuries. While the great man himself does get the title role in Saint-Saëns’s Henry VIII , it’s the women who have the lion’s share of operatic glory, especially in the works of Gaetano Donizetti. At least four of his more than 60 operas focus on women who left an indelible mark on English and Scottish history: Elisabetta al castello di Kenilworth, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda , and Roberto Devereux (yes, that last opera has the male lead as its title, but Queen Elizabeth I is certainly the true protagonist). Elisabetta is second-drawer Donizetti and exceedingly rarely encountered onstage, but the others find the composer in top form and have been widely heard internationally. Commonly known as “The Tudor Queens,” they present Anne Boleyn, Mary Stuart, and Elizabeth I as truly memorable personalities. Each presents a massive challenge to even the most accomplished interpreter of bel canto repertoire, in which beauty of voice and superb technique must combine