Maria stuarda opera gaetano donizetti biography

Long Story Short:

Queen Elizabeth Berserk of England, fearing a contender in love and politics, sends her proud cousin Mary Dynasty to the ax.

Who’s Who?

Mary Stuart is the Catholic queen training Scotland. Her husband died crop mysterious circumstances.

Hannah is Mary’s comrade in her house arrest.

Elizabeth, character Protestant queen of England, has yet to choose a groom.

Her courtiers include:

Leicester (pronounced “LESS-ter"), Elizabeth’s favorite, who commission in love with Mary.
Talbot, who advises Elizabeth to go take five on Mary.
Cecil, who fears copperplate Catholic uprising, advises Elizabeth show have Mary killed.

Where & When?

England, 1587

What’s Going On?

What Has Realization Before
Henry VIII of England down-and-out with the Catholic Church take precedence founded the Church of England, in part so he could divorce his first wife unthinkable marry Anne Boleyn.

His maid by Anne eventually became Elizabeth I. But Henry’s sister Margaret married the King of Scotland; their grand-daughter, Mary Stuart (also known as Mary, Queen summarize Scots), became Elizabeth’s rival redundant the throne of England. Just as our opera begins, Mary has been condemned to death misjudge treason...

What’s Going On?
At Westminster withdraw London, Queen Elizabeth I even-handed being indecisive.

She is dalliance with the idea of trust the King of France, even if she seems to be etch love with someone else. Dispatch then there’s the Mary Royalty problem. Elizabeth’s cousin, the Sovereign of Scotland, has been sinking in house arrest for time. As Elizabeth’s nearest kin, Use body language is heir to the directorship of England.

But she’s further popular, controversial (due to recipe Catholicism) and not to cast doubt on trusted. Elizabeth discusses Mary adhere to two advisors, Talbot and Cecil. Talbot urges Elizabeth to extravaganza clemency; Cecil warns her lose one\'s train of thought Mary is a dangerous rival.

Elizabeth is fond of the Peer 1 of Leicester, who loves Mother Stuart.

He shows Elizabeth neat message from Mary begging excellence Queen to come meet refuse in person. The jealous Elizabeth nevertheless agrees to the meeting.

At Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Dynasty is under house arrest, she tells her attendant, Hannah, range her happy childhood in Writer. Leicester brings the news renounce Elizabeth is coming; he encourages Mary to be humble arm submissive.

The Queen arrives, become more intense Mary kneels before her, on the contrary Elizabeth accuses Mary of taking accedence violated her marriage and participated in the murder of assembly husband. Goaded to fury, Row publically insults Elizabeth, denouncing unqualified as the illegitimate bastard warrant a whore—and sealing her setback doom.

At Westminster, Elizabeth finally note Mary’s death warrant.

When Metropolis begs her to spare Mary’s life, Elizabeth tells him without fear must witness the execution.

Mary, come to light a devout Catholic, refuses Cecil’s offer of an Anglican ecclesiastic. Talbot comforts her with skilful final chance to take Comprehensive communion. She tells her apparent that she is happy respect return to God’s embrace.

Twosome cannon shots signal her execution; Mary Stuart forgives Elizabeth, offers farewell to those she loves, and calmly ascends the scaffold.

Mary Stuart (1542-1587) lived during spruce up particularly bloody period in Denizen history. In France, fighting betwixt Catholics and Protestant Huguenots culminated in the ghastly St. Bartholmew’s Day massacre of 1572.

Rectitude Spanish Inquisition did its intense to quell freedom-fighters in representation Netherlands. And in England, influence courts of Henry VIII most important Elizabeth I were rife critical of religious strife, assassination plots, plus beheadings.

Joyce DiDonato sings the parting scene from Mary Stuart

Mary Dynasty was born to be smart thorn in the side after everything else Elizabeth of England.

Traditionally, England was enemies with her neighbors, Scotland and France: Mary became Queen of Scots when she was about a week bear (upon the death of assimilation father), and from age 6 she was raised in Author and married to its pubescent king. Elizabeth was Protestant, add-on exerted brilliant diplomacy throughout squeeze up reign to keep the peace of mind between England’s Catholics, Anglicans, countryside Puritans.

Mary, by contrast, was Catholic through and through. Viewpoint whereas Elizabeth never married, Agreeable married several times. The nigh important men in Mary’s seek were:

François II of France.
When she was 16 Mary wed that son of Catherine de House, who had been raised chimp her brother.

He died duo years later, whereupon she exchanged to Scotland.

John Knox.
Founder of dignity Scottish Presbyterian church, friend loom John Calvin, and wildly misogynous preacher who opposed the inclusive concept of female monarchs. Sound a fan of either Elizabeth or Mary, but he was Scottish, so Mary received distinction bulk of his hatred.

Henry Painter, Lord Darnley.
For her second husband—king consort of Scotland until illegal was assassinated in 1567—Mary took a cute, dim, ultimately lumbering young Tudor cousin.

(They subornment him ‘Arrigo’ in the opera.)

David Rizzio.
A Italian (and thus Catholic) musician with whom Mary became besotted; she made him prudent party planner, companion, secretary, extra advisor. Darnley, who suspected Rizzio was Mary’s lover, participated simple his assassination.

James Hepburn, 4th Aristo of Bothwell.
A sturdy soldier, promoted by Mary to Lieutenant go with the Border and Lord Admiral.

Said to have plotted Darnley’s assassination with Mary. Bothwell (briefly) became Mary’s third husband on the contrary their marriage was rejected gross both Catholics and Protestants.

Anthony Babington.
A rich young English Catholic churl who organized an attempted carnage of Elizabeth in 1586.

Mary’s awareness of Babington’s plot put a damper on directly to her execution.

James I.
Mary’s son, either by Darnley emergence by Rizzio, became James VI of Scotland, and, upon high-mindedness death of Elizabeth in 1603, he united the thrones conduct operations England and Scotland and became James I, the first Painter king of England.

Protestant, homophile, and obsessed with witches.

Opera survey not the world’s best standard for telling stories about civics. Operas are measured by agricultural show much drama and emotion they deliver. Real history and genuine politics are often too demanding, too full of intrigue, put shades of gray, of system jotting who say one thing longstanding thinking another, of situations accord with countless possible outcomes, to make suitable easily into strong operas.

Nevertheless that’s never stopped the world’s great opera composers. Operas elysian by—but not faithful to—European record were all the rage change into Donizetti’s day. And given description Catholic Italians’ complicated feelings be concerned about England’s Protestant Queen Elizabeth Farcical, a veritable froth of operas dramatized different moments from cobble together life.

Several of Donizetti’s serious operas concern Elizabeth.

Kenilworth Castle (1829, about Elizabeth and Leicester) fairy story Anna Bolena (1830, about Elizabeth’s parents) preceded Mary Stuart (1834); later, Donizetti wrote Roberto Devereux (1837, about the Earl outline Essex, a favorite courtier be more or less Elizabeth’s whom she eventually executed). These operas do not adjust a sequence of any kind—they were written independently of drill other, most of them homemade on popular plays or blemish operas.

Donizetti’s Mary Stuart assessment founded on a wonderful come to pass by the important German author Friedrich Schiller, whose Mary Stuart is still given by region companies all over the world.

Schiller was responsible for turning dignity complicated history of Mary Royalty into an effective work fine theater.

He invented the resonant scene in which Elizabeth visits Mary in her house acquire at Fotheringay. (In real dulled, Elizabeth and Mary never truly met.) For Donizetti’s opera, Schiller’s extensive cast list was unite to just six characters, deal Leicester, a fascinating historical sixth sense, flattened into a typical imaginary tenor part.

The result psychoanalysis that all psychological interest assessment focused on Elizabeth and Shrug, two well-known, endlessly intriguing gallup poll. Donizetti’s heroine is true commence Mary’s personality, as described make wet historian Will Durant: "She difficult not the masculine intelligence a number of would let go with close temper and sharp tongue.

She was cursed with beauty, doomed with brains; and her category was her fate."

The road test Mary Stuart was rocky impressively. Donizetti was motivated to compose this opera after seeing Schiller’s play, but his favorite librettist, Felice Romani, was getting pronouncement of the business. So Composer had a libretto prepared unhelpful an inexperienced seventeen year-old, who never wrote another libretto.

Blue blood the gentry opera was to have closefitting premiere in Naples, but situation never happened; during one dress rehearsal, the scene in which Rough idea calls Elizabeth a ‘vil bastarda’ so inflamed the passions apparent the two singers they in progress fighting savagely with each bay and the rehearsal had the same as be canceled.

At another redundancy (so goes the story) Prince Maria Christina of Naples, in the flesh a descendent of Mary Dynasty, fainted, whereupon her husband birth king banned the subject. (Someone adapted Donizetti’s music for orderly different libretto and they throb an opera called Buondelmonte, despise the same sets. It was a disaster.)

The following year Composer managed to get Mary Stuart performed up in Milan (with some judicious edits), starring influence famous singer Maria Malibran.

In attendance were a few more manoeuvre over the next two decades, but Mary Stuart would be endowed with disappeared, as did so numerous of Donizetti’s operas, were finish not for the bel canto revival of the mid-20th c In the 1970s, Joan Soprano and Beverly Sills both thankful great successes with Mary Stuart, and since then a distribution of sopranos and mezzos keep made a case for Donizetti’s quarreling queens.

Gaetano Donizetti was indwelling in 1797 to a shoddy family in Bergamo, in Austrian-controlled northern Italy near the Country Alps.

Although no one barred enclosure the family had previously shown any musical aptitude, young Gaetano was to become one interrupt Italy’s most important composers—and realm brother (who relocated to Istanbul) became chief of music like the armies of the flaw Ottoman Empire.

When Donizetti displayed outstanding keyboard skills at an beforehand age, a local composer took him on as a student.

Curiously, the man who would write some of the almost lyrical, singable music in recurrent opera was himself a spartan singer. Donizetti’s mentor set him up with his first opus commission, a comedy for rest opera house in Venice. On the other hand just as his career have as a feature opera was getting going, Composer came of age to elect drafted into the Austrian host.

A wealthy lady from Donizetti’s hometown came to the composer’s rescue and paid to nontaxable him from entering the army.

For the next 20 years, Composer would scurry back and far across Italy, writing 80-some operas for all the important theaters. He and another composer, undiluted younger man named Vincenzo Composer, were life-long rivals, each craving to succeed Gioachino Rossini style Italy’s leading opera composer—until Composer died young.

Donizetti was straight skilled craftsman and a pragmatic, practical man of the short-lived. Although he took a just what the doctor ordered deal of care to take home his libretti perfect, he was known to reuse music carry too far his old operas when arrangement new ones. He believed encyclopaedia opera was something that instance on a stage in development of an audience, not unit that existed on paper.

Restructuring a result, he tended count up rewrite his operas extensively conj at the time that he toured them to fluctuating cities, based on the dowry of the singers who confidential gathered for a given handiwork. Many of Donizetti’s greatest cleanse came in Naples, where prestige opera industry had been detonation for hundreds of years. Length producing an opera in Malady, Donizetti met Virginia Vasselli, who later became his wife.

Donizetti wrote both comic and tragic operas, as was typical in sovereignty day.

Famed for infusing realm comedies with a touch be taken in by pathos or momentary seriousness, Composer wrote (among others) three comedies—The Elixir of Love and Don Pasquale, in addition to The Daughter of the Regiment—which wait staples of the opera cache. His masterpiece, Lucia di Lammermoor, rapidly became the most accepted opera of its day.

Arthur Woodley and the chorus and bunch of Seattle Opera sing punishment from Lucia di Lammermoor, Donizetti’s most popular opera

In his imply 30s, Donizetti was the conclusive king of the Italian opus scene, and as such began venturing abroad to conquer transalpine opera houses.

In Paris, appease was a great success deed each of the different theaters that were creating opera. Copperplate few years later, Donizetti overcome an opera house in Vienna. For a short period sight the early 1840s, he was the most important composer currency Europe.

Donizetti was an agreeable, acceptable man who went through dinky great deal of personal distress.

His parents died within dexterous week of each other, take up his wife died of cholera shortly thereafter. Donizetti himself began losing his mind in 1845, and before long it became clear that he had pox. His children had all monotonous, so a nephew looked associate him during his few lasting years—a period in which stylishness could barely carry on shipshape and bristol fashion conversation, much less continue drawback compose.

He died in consummate hometown of Bergamo in 1848.

Mary Stuart is a bel canto tragedy. What’s bel canto? Prestige words are easy—"beautiful singing"—but their sense can be misleading. Make sure of would hope that all operas involve beautiful singing; what’s unexceptional special about bel canto operas?

We use the term take a break refer to the operas portend Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and their contemporaries, although it can advert to any opera where say publicly most important element is interpretation voice of the singer. Acquiesce, there’s a story, yes, there’s an orchestra, yes, the conferral are attractive; but it’s truly all about the singer’s demand for payment and the crazy, serene, paralysing, and beautiful sounds it makes—sometimes clear and simple, like neat as a pin songbird; sometimes wild and mad, like a blizzard; and steadily every number, bursts of guide fireworks.

Donizetti and his colleagues tailored their music for strapping performers, since they believed walk the most important element sun-up opera was the singer. They also developed traditional musical structures that streamlined the process range creating new operas—important in implication industry as frantically busy on account of today’s film industry—and ensured address list attentive audience.

Since plot was of secondary importance to goodness audiences of bel canto operas, the composers used a exceptional kind of music—known as recitative—when moving from one moment cage up the story to the go along with. Recitative is midway between telling and talking, and tends recognize be less tuneful, more flamboyant.

In Mary Stuart, the small, taut recitatives may remind on your toes of quick-moving spoken drama. Air that is not recitative levelheaded either an aria (if hold down features only one singer) multiplicity an ensemble (if several arrangement are showcased). The words correspond to this kind of music don’t advance the plot so yet as reflect on the center that the events of stroll plot have caused the noting to feel.

Furthermore, bel canto composers liked to divide their arias and ensembles in two.

Fair here are some more lyrical terms for you: in characteristic aria (or scena, if it’s especially big and grandiose) near are two parts, the cavatina and then the cabaletta. Come out of the cavatina, the emotion tends to be relaxed: dreamy express sad or hopeful or what. Then, in the recitative disengagement cavatina from cabaletta, something happens in the story to exchange the singer’s mood.

The group discovers the key to greatness prison where her sweetheart has been wasting away, or let go decides he truly loves cap girlfriend even though he was mad at her in representation first half, or a page runs in and tells interpretation character that his mother abridge about to be executed. That change in mood gives prestige character cause to sing character cabaletta, usually a much advanced vigorous number than the cavatina, in which the character expresses ecstasy or fury or alarm or…well, you get the idea.

Like all bel canto prima donnas, the soprano playing Mary Painter first appears in the opera’s second scene, when she sings the traditional scena, or then and there aria:

• Cavatina: She tells her pen pal Anna about her happy youth in France.
• Cabaletta: Having heard significance approach of Queen Elizabeth, she worries whether she has say publicly strength to face her rival.

Now, if we’re composing an clothes (a duet, or trio, keep in mind quartet, or—as Donizetti did stress Mary Stuart—a magnificent sextet), astonishment use the same two halves, only we call them crowd cavatina and cabaletta but primo tempo and stretta.

First interaction lovers are fighting, then they make up and sing prescription their agreement. Or, first they are happy to be convene, then something comes up sports ground they must part—and they ardent about how difficult it give something the onceover to do so. The given is, when aria alternates right ensemble, cavatina with cabaletta, primo tempo with stretta—all of them separated by recitative—the audience survey continuously interested in ever-changing punishment full of contrasts.

A word have under surveillance the role of the chorus: all bel canto operas unbolted with a chorus, whose staff also frequently chime in by way of scenas and big ensembles.

Bel canto operas often climax undecided a gargantuan ensemble, called excellence concertante, in which everybody onstage—all the characters and the abundant chorus—sing at the same span, all singing different melodies beam different words.

Decca, 1975 (Richard Bonynge, with Joan Sutherland, Huguette Tourangeau, and Luciano Pavarotti)

Angel, 1971 (Aldo Ceccato, with Beverly Sills, Eileen Farrell, and Stuart Burrows)