Donizetti’s Maria
Stuarda
(First time this season)
Metropolitan Opera
January 29, 2016
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| Two queens, one love interest Photo credit: Met |
Donizetti’s Maria
Stuarda is one of those rare operas that is truly female driven. The opera
is divided between the two principal women roles and their big face off ends
up relegating all of the male players to little more than quaint adornment on
the sidelines. This second of Donizetti’s three Tudor queens tells of the royal
feminine ego, and the concomitant womanly will to power.
We got our first surprise
of the evening before the conductor even took his place at the podium. The
stage manager came out with an announcement that the star of the show, Sondra
Radvanovsky, had been suffering from a cold. A shudder of horror rippled
through the crowd. The disappointment was palpable. But, she would be singing
anyway, which unleashed a sigh of uncertain relief into the hall. Still, I was
worried that the Donizettian bel canto fireworks would come out muddled.
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| Maria's confession Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
Like her predecessor in Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda is disgraced by a disgraceful rival, only this time
that rival is a woman, rather than a slimy husband. Even though the two
storylines have many plot points in common, this is a very different queen. Maria
Stuarda is different perhaps most of all in terms of her vocal
characterization. Though the range of emotions she covers is not as vast as
that of her soprano assoluta counterparts (in Anna Bolena and Roberto
Devereux), she nevertheless covers a great deal of emotional ground.
Maria Stuarda is the softer
spoken cousin of the other two queens. Her range is on the piano or soft
and silent side of things, the place where self-reflective meditation and
ecstatic flights of spiritual elation take place: melancholic meanderings of
the memory and mind. Her moral fortitude and religious conviction wins the day for her, no matter how dismal that day concludes. She is the one
who comes out holding her head high. She is the one who maintains her elegance,
who goes out with understated pride, who faces her fate in a conniption fit of
pious mysticism. It is clear where Donizetti’s sympathies lay. He is on the
side of the poor, unjustly deposed Catholic queen, it would seem.
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| Guarda: sui prati appare Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
When we are first
introduced to her she is glowing with the satisfaction of being granted a
stroll in the great outdoors with her aria, Guarda:
sui prati appare. In this scene Sondra Radvanovsky was radiant. Her
face was lit with joy and the music lifted along with her. She is calm and collected
but also ineffably happy. She sings of nostalgia for a long lost past, but
she is also confident in her present. She doesn’t let the melancholic moment
get the best of her. But then the music shifts to sadness and she is overcome
by the deeper existential portent of her situation as the political prisoner of
her ruthless rival to the throne. And her vocal characterization changes
accordingly. This is the stuff Donizetti’s brilliance is made of.
Enter Guglielmo, the Earl
of Leicester (her love interest), and suddenly she grows confident again, yet,
at the same time, waxes tender with affection for an old friend and for the
warmth of human connection. In terms of the emotional palette of this sequence
that consumes most of the second half of Act II, the best is yet to come. They
are told that the queen is out walking in those same woods. Maria Stuarda’s
initial reaction is dread and fear. Her first instinct is to flee, but she
hesitates more than once, rethinks her instinct, and stands her ground.
Cowardice does not become her. So she stands tall. The scene is a thrilling
study of feminine instinct and conviction.
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| Elizabeth plays with fire Photo credit: Sara Krulwich / New York Times |
When they finally meet,
Maria reluctantly but graciously deigns to lower herself before her cousin, her
captor, her queen. Her vocal characterization is now docile, pious, respectful.
The queen cannot contain herself and in a dramatic slowly building crescendo,
she rises up like a wave and comes crashing down on poor Maria Stuarda,
accusing her of having murdered her own husband and provoking what Radvanovsky
played convincingly as an outburst of self-righteous rage. Her body
language didn’t get all riled up, but her voice did. I was extremely impressed
by the way Radvanovsky completely owned the moment through conveying all of her
emotions in her voice. She was raw anger and rage but in her body she was
self-possessed. It’s one of those operatic moments that sends tingles through
your body when done right. And this performance was definitely in the sweet
spot. Even if her voice struggled to break through her reported head cold, the
resulting effects were right in line with both the character and the demands of
scene. In fact, it’s hard to know whether the cracks in her voice were
intentional or not. The rawness of the moment came through all the way.
Her big confrontation with
Elizabeth was gripping. This is possibly one of the most intense series of
insults ever uttered in an opera:
Figlia
impura di Bolena,
Parli tu
di disonore?
Meretrice
indegna e oscena,
In te cada
il mio rossore.
Profanato
è il soglio inglese,
Vil
bastarda, dal tuo piè!
It is also the dramatic turn
point of the opera. While it seemed that the two women might try to get
along for a moment, there is definitely no going back after Maria calls
Elisabetta a bastard whore who spoils the English soil by merely standing on it. While there are
many ways of delivering this scathing recitative, I appreciated the boiling yet composed rage of Radvanovsky, who
rose up into the highest reaches of her range only for the big oscena
climax of her tirade. Meretrice indegna oscena. Wow! Otherwise she only punctuated the beginning and the end of the passage. Her initial “No” emitted from her in the form
of a chesty nearly spoken voice, as was the concluding “piè” of her “dal
suo piè.”
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| Maria Stuarda's final prayer Photo credit: Ken Howard |
The inspired, passionate
and despairing heart of Maria Stuarda came across in the final sequence of the
opera. Her final prayer was incredibly moving, mystical rapture backed up by
the chorus. This is what stands in the place of Anna Bolena’s famous madness
aria.
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| Ascent to martyrdom Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
The final passage of the
opera (Roberto! Roberto! Ascolta), as the heroine turns to face her
death, is about the lofty heights to which the soul can climb. It’s profound
musical experience even if subdued in pacing and in tone, though I think this
is what largely makes it so special. The depth of feeling that the Queen of
Scots expresses as she prepares for her ascent, to meet her maker, is almost
otherworldly and Radvanovsky embodied it beautifully, with a feverish crescendo
from pious softness to soaring rapture, particularly when it came to the repeat
of the last line il flagello di un Dio punitor, also thanks to the
faster tempi chosen by maetsro Riccardo
Frizza. Here Sir David McVicar’s production stages that ascent as one that
is decidedly dark. The heroine ascends to face her executioner though the
extremes of piety she demonstrated throughout the piece leads you to believe
that she is actually heading to a better place, beyond the treacherous dungeon
depths of what she has apparently experienced for the last 18 long years. In
her scarlet petticoat, she proclaims herself a martyr for the Catholic faith.
Sondra Radvanovsky was
radiant as Maria Stuarda. Though she reportedly had a cold, she sure didn’t
show it. She has a purity of sound coupled with controlled power. Even singing
softly for some of her tender reflective moments she still completely filled
the space of the Met. If this is Radvanovsky’s Maria Stuarda on an off day, I’m
tempted to come back to catch her when she’s on.
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| Cecil persuades Elizabeth to get rid of Maria Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
I’ve heard it said that
Elisabetta is the other half of Maria Stuarda’s soprano assoluta role. Together
they form one masterful whole of great compositional breadth and invention.
South African soprano Elza van den Heever under McVicar’s direction gave
her Elisabetta an awkward manly, if not androgynous gait, which turns turns the
character into a sort of limping monster, a grostesque that is only reinforced
by the make up and costuming decisions implemented by John Macfarlane’s
set and costume designs. We saw van Heever in this role back in 2012 and I
remember her being even more captivating then. Here she was strong, she
obviously squarely possesses the role, with two feet planted firmly on the
ground, but I kept expecting her to sing louder, to show us even more vividly
what she can do with this lady crazed by power, love and jealousy. And what a
way to represent the visionary virginal queen of the English renaissance. The
horror! For her it would seem that all politics are personal and entirely
personally is the only way to take your realpolitik. Even better to be brusque
about it.
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| Queen is not pleased with Roberto Photo credit: Met |
As to the gentlemen, in
this opera they really have secondary roles but still here were cast
brilliantly. Tenor Celso Albelo as Roberto, the Earl of Leicester,
really came out strong for his last big number, Iniqui tutti. He was
bright and round in the upper register though never strident and his instrument
played off Radvanovsky’s beautifully in their duets together. It amounted to an
impressive debut at the Met and I look forward to hearing more from him.
Baritone Patrick Carfizzi as Guglielmo Cecil, Elizabeth’s secretary of
state, very compellingly performed his peripheral male role. His booming deep
baritone was lyrical and fluid, with a velvety charismatic sound that left me
wanting more.
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| Devilish clowns entertain Elizabeth's court Photo credit: Met |
Sir David McVicar’s production proceeds with an efficient economy. Opening on the
deep blood red reception hall at court that is lost in the throes of a
carnivalesque celebration, replete with acrobatic devils, sets us up for the
deep crimson red of Maria Stuarda’s undergarments in the final scene that she
strips down to before approaching her executioner. As is the case in his work
for Anna Bolena, the scene changes fluidly from one to the next that
keeps the action moving right along at an almost dreamlike pace, especially
considering the largely subdued overall tone of this most mystical of Donizetti
royal tragedies. All roads lead to the material renunciation of an apparently
most spiritual regal personality.
– Lui & Lei
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| To sign or not to sign the death warrant Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
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