Lyric Opera 2019-2020 Issue 6 The Three Queens

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 30 screaming with jealousy and calling her rival utterly unworthy of Donizetti’s favor. At the dress rehearsal for the premiere, the Queen of Naples fainted at the point in the opera where Mary hears that she is to be executed. Then and there, the King cancelled all the performances. Donizetti, resourceful composer that he was, employed another libretto entitled Buondelmonte and adapted the Maria Stuarda score to it. The cobbled-together work opened with the same cast a few months later, but it was a failure. Once the Milan censors approved the libretto, the opera could premiere in 1835 at La Scala with that era’s most wildly acclaimed diva, the ravishing Maria Malibran, in the title role. The prima donna takes wing in Maria Stuarda ’s third act: first, in a duet in which the courtier Talbot – who’s also a priest! – hears her confession, and then in the opera’s magnificent final scene. As in Anna Bolena , this scene is somewhat unconventionally structured. It, too, opens with a somber chorus, this one rather larger-scale than that of Anna Bolena , but here again, a group of the condemned woman’s supporters are expressing their deep concern. When the dignified Mary appears, she asks everyone to join her in a prayer. Donizetti refers to it in the score as the “Inno della Morte,” “Hymn of Death,” but it’s wonderfully majestic and uplifting. This is Mary’s greatest test in the opera: she must sustain a top G over the chorus at a stately tempo for 21 beats and then, in the same breath, ascend note by note to a high B-flat. It’s a moment in which shining, rock-steady tone must be colored by an air of total serenity. Mary has two more major challenges: a brief but exquisite aria, in which she magnanimously asks heaven to bless Elizabeth and her people; and then a second aria, this one a farewell to her companion, Hannah Kennedy, and the Earl of Leicester. This isn’t about vocal display at all: it’s vivid, nobly conceived music, very much anticipating early Verdi in the dramatic, thrusting power of each phrase. It sets the seal on a scene that a great American scholar of bel canto, William Ashbrook, Sondra Radvanovsky in the final scene of Maria Stuarda , Metropolitan Opera, 2015|16 season. praised for the composer’s ability “to communicate the drama with a soaring directness balanced by moments of lyrical expansiveness that strike the listener with the force of truth.” The leading lady of the aborted Stuarda premiere, grand- voiced Giuseppina Ronzi di Begnis, led the cast of the first Roberto Devereux – again, at Naples, in 1838. This is Donizetti at his mature best, creating in Elizabeth a characterization to rank with Bellini’s Norma in its sheer vocal grandeur and complexity of emotion. The title character, the Earl of Essex, is one of the most misguided figures in English history, given his rashness in overestimating his power over the Queen. In contrast to real life, the opera centers on the Queen’s desperate jealousy regarding Essex’s infatuation with Sarah, Duchess of Nottingham. That liaison didn’t exist in history – the real Duchess was a woman roughly the same age as the Queen herself! The Duke, until Essex betrays him, is the Earl’s great friend in the opera, whereas the real men had no relationship at all, amicable or otherwise. The harrowing final scene opens with a deeply moving cavatina for Elizabeth. Here the singer has the challenge of pouring feeling out of herself, shaping the lines with the utmost expressive power. In this aria, “Vivi, ingrato” (“Live, you ungrateful man”), the monarch is able to reveal all the anguish of unrequited love. The great moment comes when she declares, “Let no one say he has seen the Queen of England weeping.” Here the line plunges in a startling arpeggio from top A to bottom D, which only serves to emphasize the emotional strain for her at this moment. There’s no “bridge” number between that aria to the concluding one – just the dramatic intervention of the Nottinghams, through which Elizabeth confirms, to her horror, that her friend Sarah was her rival and that Essex is dead. At this point, any element of elaborate technical dexterity would have been singularly inappropriate; the Queen is beyond devastated, and it takes all the emotional strength acquired over her turbulent lifetime to survive this moment. As she bitterly castigates the Duke and Sarah, then envisions Essex’s head and her own tomb, the huge phrases should emerge from her with positively monumental power. It seems a rather surprising afterthought that, in her final seconds of singing, she suddenly adds, “Let James be King of England,” although he didn’t assume the throne until the death of Elizabeth in March 1603, two years after Essex’s execution. For anyone who appreciates dramatic power and resplendent vocalism in Italian opera, “ The Three Queens” is a unique gift. A company can undertake such a project only when the right singer comes along. After well over a century of neglect, these operas gradually were restored to favor, beginning with Maria Callas singing Anna Bolena in 1957, and then all three operas subsequently in the performances of such exceptional sopranos as Beverly Sills, Leyla Gencer, Montserrat Caballé, and more recently Mariella Devia. All who attend the Lyric performances can rejoice that in Sondra Radvanovsky we have a similarly extraordinary artist who has taken her rightful place in the glorious tradition of these operas. Roger Pines is the dramaturg of Lyric Opera of Chicago. Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera