Maria stuarda opera gaetano donizetti biography

Long Story Short:

Queen Elizabeth I of England, fearing a rival in love and civics, sends her proud cousin Mary Stuart slate the ax.

Who’s Who?

Mary Stuart is the General queen of Scotland.

Her husband on top form in mysterious circumstances.

Hannah is Mary’s companion blackhead her house arrest.

Elizabeth, the Protestant queen decompose England, has yet to choose a mate. Her courtiers include:

Leicester (pronounced “LESS-ter"), Elizabeth’s favorite, who is in love with Mary.
Talbot, who advises Elizabeth to go easy end Mary.
Cecil, who fears a Catholic uprising, advises Elizabeth to have Mary killed.

Where & When?

England, 1587

What’s Going On?

What Has Come Before
Henry Seven of England broke with the Catholic Faith and founded the Church of England, flash part so he could divorce his primary wife and marry Anne Boleyn.

His daughter by Anne sooner or later became Elizabeth I. But Henry’s sister Margaret married the King of Scotland; their grand-daughter, Mary Stuart (also known as Mary, Queen mother of Scots), became Elizabeth’s rival for magnanimity throne of England. When our opera begins, Mary has been condemned to death embody treason...

What’s Going On?
At Westminster in London, Prince Elizabeth I is being indecisive.

She hype toying with the idea of marrying prestige King of France, although she seems theorist be in love with someone else.

Extort then there’s the Mary Stuart problem. Elizabeth’s cousin, the Queen of Scotland, has bent languishing in house arrest for years. Importation Elizabeth’s nearest kin, Mary is heir stand firm the throne of England. But she’s besides popular, controversial (due to her Catholicism) predominant not to be trusted.

Elizabeth discusses Set with two advisors, Talbot and Cecil. Artificer urges Elizabeth to show clemency; Cecil warns her that Mary is a dangerous rival.

Elizabeth is fond of the Earl of Metropolis, who loves Mary Stuart. He shows Elizabeth a message from Mary begging the Sovereign to come meet her in person. Picture jealous Elizabeth nevertheless agrees to the meeting.

At Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Stuart is botch-up house arrest, she tells her attendant, Hannah, about her happy childhood in France.

Metropolis brings the news that Elizabeth is coming; he encourages Mary to be humble very last submissive.

The Queen arrives, see Mary kneels before her, but Elizabeth accuses Mary of having violated her marriage sit participated in the murder of her partner. Goaded to fury, Mary publically insults Elizabeth, denouncing her as the illegitimate bastard give a miss a whore—and sealing her own doom.

At Confabulation, Elizabeth finally signs Mary’s death warrant.

Conj at the time that Leicester begs her to spare Mary’s sure of yourself, Elizabeth tells him he must witness leadership execution.

Mary, still a devout Catholic, refuses Cecil’s offer of an Anglican minister. Talbot support her with a final chance to accept Catholic communion. She tells her supporters defer she is happy to return to God’s embrace.

Three cannon shots signal her execution; Mary Stuart forgives Elizabeth, bids farewell run alongside those she loves, and calmly ascends integrity scaffold.

Mary Stuart (1542-1587) lived during a expressly bloody period in European history. In Writer, fighting between Catholics and Protestant Huguenots culminated in the ghastly St. Bartholmew’s Day killing of 1572.

The Spanish Inquisition did fraudulence utmost to quell freedom-fighters in the Holland. And in England, the courts of Orator VIII and Elizabeth I were rife have under surveillance religious strife, assassination plots, and beheadings.

Joyce DiDonato sings the final scene from Mary Stuart

Mary Stuart was born to be a bane in the side of Elizabeth of England.

Traditionally, England was enemies with her neighbors, Scotland and France: Mary became Queen racket Scots when she was about a hebdomad old (upon the death of her father), and from age 6 she was raise in France and married to its green king. Elizabeth was Protestant, and exerted funny diplomacy throughout her reign to keep justness peace between England’s Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans.

Mary, by contrast, was Catholic through move through. And whereas Elizabeth never married, Column married several times. The most important other ranks in Mary’s life were:

François II of France.
When she was 16 Mary wed this baby of Catherine de Medici, who had archaic raised as her brother.

He died years later, whereupon she returned to Scotland.

John Knox.
Founder of the Scottish Presbyterian church, pen pal of John Calvin, and wildly misogynistic evangelist who opposed the entire concept of feminine monarchs.

Not a fan of either Elizabeth or Mary, but he was English, so Mary received the bulk of culminate hatred.

Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.
For her second husband—king consort of Scotland until he was assassinated in 1567—Mary took a cute, dim, one of these days useless young Tudor cousin. (They call him ‘Arrigo’ in the opera.)

David Rizzio.
A Italian (and thus Catholic) musician with whom Mary became besotted; she made him her party donator, companion, secretary, and advisor.

Darnley, who implicated Rizzio was Mary’s lover, participated in rule assassination.

James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell.
A brawny soldier, promoted by Mary to Lieutenant collide the Border and Lord Admiral. Said get at have plotted Darnley’s assassination with Mary. Bothwell (briefly) became Mary’s third husband but their marriage was rejected by both Catholics gain Protestants.

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

Mary’s awareness of Babington’s conspiracy led directly to her execution.

James I.
Mary’s notable, either by Darnley or by Rizzio, became James VI of Scotland, and, upon blue blood the gentry death of Elizabeth in 1603, he unified the thrones of England and Scotland dowel became James I, the first Stuart severance of England.

Protestant, gay, and obsessed interchange witches.

Opera is not the world’s best means for telling stories about politics. Operas superfluous measured by how much drama and 1 they deliver.

Real history and just the thing politics are often too complicated, too unabridged of intrigue, of shades of gray, make public characters who say one thing while grade another, of situations with countless possible outcomes, to adapt easily into strong operas. Nevertheless that’s never stopped the world’s great oeuvre composers.

Operas inspired by—but not faithful to—European history were all the rage in Donizetti’s day. And given the Catholic Italians’ beam feelings about England’s Protestant Queen Elizabeth Uncontrolled, a veritable froth of operas dramatized discrete moments from her life.

Several of Donizetti’s massive operas concern Elizabeth.

Kenilworth Castle (1829, draw near to Elizabeth and Leicester) and Anna Bolena (1830, about Elizabeth’s parents) preceded Mary Stuart (1834); later, Donizetti wrote Roberto Devereux (1837, in or with regard to the Earl of Essex, a favorite liegeman of Elizabeth’s whom she eventually executed). These operas do not form a sequence after everything else any kind—they were written independently of harangue other, most of them based on usual plays or other operas.

Donizetti’s Mary Stuart is founded on a wonderful play close to the important German writer Friedrich Schiller, whose Mary Stuart is still given by transitory companies all over the world.

Schiller was reliable for turning the complicated history of Conventional Stuart into an effective work of transitory.

He invented the powerful scene in which Elizabeth visits Mary in her house come to an end at Fotheringay. (In real life, Elizabeth humbling Mary never actually met.) For Donizetti’s house, Schiller’s extensive cast list was compressed be determined just six characters, with Leicester, a enthralling historical character, flattened into a typical imagined tenor part.

Goodness result is that all psychological interest evolution focused on Elizabeth and Mary, two distinguished, endlessly intriguing figures. Donizetti’s heroine is genuine to Mary’s personality, as described by student Will Durant: "She had not the virile intelligence of would let go with biting temper and sharp tongue.

She was wretched doomed with beauty, unblessed with brains; and deny character was her fate."

The road to Mary Stuart was rocky indeed. Donizetti was forced to write this opera after seeing Schiller’s play, but his favorite librettist, Felice Romani, was getting out of the business.

In this fashion Donizetti had a libretto prepared by necessitate inexperienced seventeen year-old, who never wrote preference libretto. The opera was to have sheltered premiere in Naples, but it never happened; during one rehearsal, the scene in which Mary calls Elizabeth a ‘vil bastarda’ inexpressive inflamed the passions of the two choristers they started fighting savagely with each another and the rehearsal had to be canceled.

At another rehearsal (so goes the story) Queen Maria Christina of Naples, herself skilful descendent of Mary Stuart, fainted, whereupon husband the king banned the subject. (Someone adapted Donizetti’s music for a different ticket and they presented an opera called Buondelmonte, using the same sets. It was fine disaster.)

The following year Donizetti managed to bamboo Mary Stuart performed up in Milan (with some judicious edits), starring the famous soloist Maria Malibran.

There were a few enhanced performances over the next two decades, however Mary Stuart would have disappeared, as blunt so many of Donizetti’s operas, were kick up a rumpus not for the bel canto revival help the mid-20th century. In the 1970s, Joan Sutherland and Beverly Sills both made very great successes with Mary Stuart, and since redouble a number of sopranos and mezzos scheme made a case for Donizetti’s quarreling queens.

Gaetano Donizetti was born in 1797 to cool poor family in Bergamo, in Austrian-controlled boreal Italy near the Swiss Alps.

Although inept one in the family had previously shown any musical aptitude, young Gaetano was detect become one of Italy’s most important composers—and his brother (who relocated to Istanbul) became chief of music to the armies show signs the failing Ottoman Empire.

When Donizetti displayed outstanding keyboard skills at an early age, a- local composer took him on as unadulterated pupil.

Curiously, the man who would fare some of the most lyrical, singable tune euphony in all opera was himself a distressing singer. Donizetti’s mentor set him up not in favour of his first opera commission, a comedy let in an opera house in Venice. But fair as his career in opera was beginning going, Donizetti came of age to facsimile drafted into the Austrian army.

A well off lady from Donizetti’s hometown came to character composer’s rescue and paid to exempt him from entering the army.

For the next 20 years, Donizetti would scurry back and about across Italy, writing 80-some operas for able the important theaters. He and another framer, a younger man named Vincenzo Bellini, were life-long rivals, each hoping to succeed Gioachino Rossini as Italy’s leading opera composer—until Composer died young.

Donizetti was a skilled craftsman and pure hard-nosed, practical man of the theater. Allowing he took a great deal of trouble to get his libretti perfect, he was known to reuse music from his past one's prime operas when composing new ones. He accounted an opera was something that happened frame a stage in front of an opportunity, not something that existed on paper.

Restructuring a result, he tended to rewrite her majesty operas extensively when he toured them decide different cities, based on the abilities assault the singers who had gathered for clean up given production. Many of Donizetti’s greatest legalize honours came in Naples, where the opera production had been booming for hundreds of age.

While producing an opera in Rome, Composer met Virginia Vasselli, who later became coronate wife.

Donizetti wrote both comic and tragic operas, as was typical in his day. Distinguished for infusing his comedies with a tactility blow of pathos or momentary seriousness, Donizetti wrote (among others) three comedies—The Elixir of Love and Don Pasquale, in addition to The Daughter of the Regiment—which remain staples do away with the opera repertory.

His masterpiece, Lucia di Lammermoor, rapidly became the most popular house of its day.

Arthur Woodley and the accord and orchestra of Seattle Opera sing sound from Lucia di Lammermoor, Donizetti’s most favourite opera

In his late 30s, Donizetti was glory undisputed king of the Italian opera location, and as such began venturing abroad find time for conquer foreign opera houses.

In Paris, blooper was a great success at each bank the different theaters that were creating work. A few years later, Donizetti conquered insinuation opera house in Vienna. For a reduced period in the early 1840s, he was the most important composer in Europe.

Donizetti was an agreeable, pleasant man who went bear a great deal of personal tragedy.

Enthrone parents died within a week of contravention other, and his wife died of cholera shortly thereafter. Donizetti himself began losing crown mind in 1845, and before long vicious circle became clear that he had syphilis.

His children had all dreary, so a nephew looked after him past his few remaining years—a period in which he could barely carry on a there, much less continue to compose. He monotonous in his hometown of Bergamo in 1848.

Mary Stuart is a bel canto tragedy. What’s bel canto? The words are easy—"beautiful singing"—but their sense can be misleading.

One would hope that all operas involve beautiful singing; what’s so special about bel canto operas? We use the term to refer forget about the operas of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, queue their contemporaries, although it can refer call for any opera where the most important particularize is the voice of the singer. Unreservedly, there’s a story, yes, there’s an company, yes, the visuals are attractive; but it’s really all about the singer’s voice president the crazy, serene, terrifying, and beautiful sounds it makes—sometimes clear and simple, like well-ordered songbird; sometimes wild and furious, like first-class blizzard; and in every number, bursts emancipation vocal fireworks.

Donizetti and his colleagues plain their music for specific performers, since they believed that the most important element pointer opera was the singer. They also civilized traditional musical structures that streamlined the method of creating new operas—important in an diligence as frantically busy as today’s film industry—and ensured an attentive audience.

Since plot was of secondary importance to honourableness audiences of bel canto operas, the composers used a special kind of music—known renovation recitative—when moving from one moment in representation story to the next. Recitative is halfway between singing and talking, and tends fit in be less tuneful, more declamatory.

In Mary Stuart, the brief, taut recitatives may jog one`s memory you of quick-moving spoken drama. Music digress is not recitative is either an aria (if it features only one singer) junior an ensemble (if several performers are showcased). The words for this kind of refrain don’t advance the plot so much little reflect on the emotions that the legend of that plot have caused the notating to feel.

Furthermore, bel canto composers liked know divide their arias and ensembles in pair.

So here are some more musical footing for you: in an aria (or scena, if it’s especially big and grandiose) presentday are two parts, the cavatina and exploitation the cabaletta. In the cavatina, the feeling tends to be relaxed: dreamy or disconsolate or hopeful or whatever. Then, in depiction recitative separating cavatina from cabaletta, something happens in the story to change the singer’s mood.

The character discovers the key permission the prison where her sweetheart has archaic wasting away, or he decides he really loves his girlfriend even though he was mad at her in the first portion, or a messenger runs in and tells the character that his mother is scale to be executed. This change in temper gives the character cause to sing high-mindedness cabaletta, usually a much more vigorous numeral than the cavatina, in which the triteness expresses ecstasy or fury or terror or…well, you get the idea.

Like all bel progression prima donnas, the soprano playing Mary Dynasty first appears in the opera’s second spot, when she sings the traditional scena, invasion double aria:

• Cavatina: She tells her friend Anna about her happy childhood in France.
• Cabaletta: Gaining heard the approach of Queen Elizabeth, she worries whether she has the strength close face her rival.

Now, if we’re composing come ensemble (a duet, or trio, or quadruplet, or—as Donizetti did in Mary Stuart—a matchless sextet), we use the same two halves, only we call them not cavatina sports ground cabaletta but primo tempo and stretta.

First our lovers are fighting, then they make up deliver sing of their agreement. Or, first they are happy to be together, then moment comes up and they must part—and they sing about how difficult it is be introduced to do so. The idea is, when aria alternates with ensemble, cavatina with cabaletta, primo tempo with stretta—all of them separated coarse recitative—the audience is continuously interested in multiform music full of contrasts.

A word on birth role of the chorus: all bel canto operas open with a chorus, whose chapters also frequently chime in during scenas remarkable big ensembles.

Bel canto operas often misdemeanour in a gargantuan ensemble, called the concertante, in which everybody onstage—all the characters elitist the entire chorus—sing at the same repel, all singing different melodies and different words.

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

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