I'll Never Stop Saying Maria
When critics evaluate Donizetti's "Three Queens" trilogy, Maria
Stuarda is often treated like a "vil bastarda" itself. As
Dallas Opera prepares to open a production of the opera this month,
IRA SIFF offers a spirited defense of this bel canto gloss on the
final days of Mary, Queen of Scots.
ack
in the 1980s in New York, before the advent of the CD crowded the
shelves at Tower Records with previously rare "pirated"
live-performance and broadcast recordings, one could always tune in
to Columbia University's WKCR on a Saturday night and listen to
some of the marvels of the previous decades on Stefan Zucker's
radio program,
Opera Fanatic. One such evening, I tuned in
and twenty minutes later realized I had been standing stock still
in my living room, riveted into place by the final scene of
Maria Stuarda, as sung by the "Queen of the Pirates,"
soprano Leyla Gencer.
It had taken a moment to realize what I was listening to; I knew
two of Donizetti's other Tudor operas,
Anna Bolena and
Roberto Devereux, very well, but I realized then that I had
neglected
Stuarda. Like so many, I had the vague impression
that Maria was a weak sister of Anna and the
Devereux
Elisabetta. But that performance caused me to think again about
this unusual and deeply rewarding work - Donizetti's forty-sixth
opera, which deals with the final days and execution of Mary Queen
of Scots.
With the bel canto revival in full swing in the 1960s, it was
inevitable that the merits of
Maria Stuarda would be
discovered, and they were - in the thrilling Maggio Musicale
Fiorentino production of 1967, starring Gencer and Shirley Verrett,
and later, in the '70s, when Beverly Sills and her director, Tito
Capobianco, created the perception of the "Tudor Trilogy" by their
famous collaboration on all three works at New York City Opera. But
Stuarda's merits are not always immediately evident to those
who are comparing the three works; perhaps because of the gentler
nature of this protagonist and the fact that
Stuarda is
really a two-diva opera, some listeners, and even singers, perceive
Anna Bolena and
Roberto Devereux as stronger.
"But it's not true at all!" counters Leyla Gencer, who sang all
three operas. "All three queens are very strong." Another criticism
leveled at the opera is that Friedrich Schiller - whose 1800 play
Maria Stuart inspired Donizetti's opera - rewrote history,
and in adapting the play, Donizetti's inexperienced librettist,
seventeen-year-old Giuseppe Bardari, strayed even further from
fact. Actually, Schiller was a historian, but his view on
historical fact was that it had to bend to the needs of great
theater. In fact, for the sake of the structure of Romantic opera,
all three of these Donizetti works employ a love triangle that
didn't really exist, and of all of them
Stuarda comes
closest to fact. Leicester, loved in the opera by both Maria
and Elisabetta, was Elizabeth's favorite and was also proposed by
her as a possible spouse for her cousin Mary in 1563, more than two
decades before the action of
Maria Stuarda. But history per
se is hardly the point of Romantic bel canto opera. "These queens
are seen as Donizetti wished to see them," explains Gencer. "And so
we must think on another level, not just precisely historic. They
are very different, one from the other. Stuarda is the sweetest,
let's say, most noble, and above all, she is the Catholic queen.
She dies as a person of great faith. But one cannot make
comparisons between the three. She isn't the palest one - she is
one of the most beautiful, the most romantic. I find it unjust,
absolutely, to define her as secondary. She's secondary because
they play her in a secondary fashion! This role depends on the
interpreter to render her important. All three queens can become
extremely tedious if they're played badly. Donizetti is a very
great composer, a creator of characters, who has never been
entirely understood. He understood,
felt, how different
these queens were psychologically one from the other. I could say,
even, that my favorite is Stuarda. The confrontation scene, when
she rebels against Elisabetta, can pass into the history of
Romantic opera as some of the most important pages. And you know,
you will hear on the recording, that I don't sing, but I insult!
And after that insult I get applause from the entire audience.
Think of the scene of Maria's confession, and the final scene.
These are exceptional, extraordinary pages, very beautiful. It
gives one chills."
But Beverly Sills, whose desire to record and
perform all three Donizetti queens brought these operas to New York
audiences, sees it differently. "Well, if you do all three, you
have a powerhouse Elizabeth I - probably the most powerful woman in
the world - Anna Bolena, who was a very strong personality …
and Maria, who was high-strung, and for whom everything was
romantic and love. She's got two powerhouse words, and they're
called 'vil bastarda,' and that's it. But the truth of the matter
is that any time you have an opera with Elizabeth I in it, you're
going to be overshadowed by the strength of that character.
Frankly, Stuarda has more beautiful things to sing… and the
way Tito [Capobianco] staged it for me! In the final scene he had
her in that red dress, and there's a fermata in the score, which he
took total advantage of, and had her rap three times on the side of
the guillotine for the holy spirits, and then you saw the blade
come down, and then a blackout! On the opening night, a woman
screamed out, 'No, no!' But still, with Elizabeth there - and I was
blessed, I had a wonderful English girl whose name was Pauline
Tinsley, who not only had a voice of steel, but she looked like
Elizabeth. And she had a powerhouse high E-flat, which she used to
great avail - it didn't hurt her in the least bit! Because of the
contrast, it made Maria much more vulnerable and easier to play, so
that by the time the opera ended, the audience's sympathies were
totally on Maria's side. I also had, aside from Eileen [Farrell] on
the recording, Marisa Galvany as Elisabetta. I loved her. She also
had a steel-like quality onstage. Between Tinsley and Galvany, you
had your work cut out for you! They were both fearless. I liked
singers like that. But if I hadn't sung the other two, I would have
been a bit frustrated with Stuarda. I would have wanted to sing
Elizabeth!"
Galvany says of Elizabeth, "You can sing her as a soprano or mezzo.
I think it's delicious when two sopranos do the opera, and my voice
was darker than Beverly's. The confrontation scene took on its own
life. Sparks really flew, and the audience went crazy. I think it's
a strong piece - not, perhaps, for the men, but for the women it
has wonderful opportunities. It brings out Elizabeth's doubts,
strengths and her feminine side. You can find various aspects to
her character. One night, when I was deciding Maria's fate, I got
really worked up at the pressure of sentencing her to death, and I
banged on the table so hard the proclamation flew up in the air -
and I caught it!"
Fortunately,
Maria Stuarda has hardly been put on the shelf
by contemporary opera producers; this month, it turns up as part of
Dallas Opera's season. Karen Stone, Dallas's general director,
feels that "
Stuarda is the ultimate 'diva' opera. I love bel
canto opera and many unknown Donizetti works, but
Stuarda is
certainly my preferred Tudor one. How many opportunities does a
soprano have to scream 'Vil bastarda' at another one - onstage,
during a performance, and loudly! How to top that scene? Donizetti
manages it in one of the most poignant arias with chorus in the
whole repertory, Maria's Act III prayer."
These comments drive home the point that Romantic
bel canto opera is performer-driven opera. And
Stuarda is a
brilliant case in point. Sills's 1971 recording offers a vivid
interpretation of a headstrong romantic, and she lavishes upon it
her plangent tone and florid virtuosity in the form of high-flying
embellishments. Gencer, a champion of the composer, who delivers
her Donizetti more
come scritto, finds the meaning, as she
puts it, "within the notes," using less decoration, achieving a
towering portrayal. Both are stunning. It's a matter of the
artist's gifts and the listener's taste. There is also room for
Caballé, Sutherland and Gruberova, who all made Maria their
own in different ways.
Another aspect of the opera that presents a challenge is the fact
that Schiller's play deals only with the final days of Mary
Stuart's life. Her tumultuous youth - her coronation as Queen of
Scotland before her first birthday; her childhood betrothal to the
Dauphin of France and her brief, teen-aged reign as French queen;
her abdication of the Scots crown and her flight for refuge to
England, where she was a virtual prisoner for the last nineteen
years of her life - is well over by the time the action of the
drama begins. The attendant intrigues and violent episodes of her
reign as Queen of Scots - including the suspicious death of her
second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley - are only mentioned
fleetingly in the confrontation and confession scenes of the opera.
Therefore, Maria seems a more passive character, save her one
outburst defying Elisabetta. She is a martyr to her faith, and her
music defines her as such, through some of Donizetti's most noble
melodies and imaginative harmonies. In contrast, Elisabetta's music
harks back to Rossini; like the queen herself, it is more rigid but
also has an inherent irony, even sarcasm to its nature. She may not
be quite the complex Elisabetta of
Devereux - the only
Donizetti character I can think of who is awarded two entirely
different verses of text in her final cabaletta - but neither is
she one-dimensional.
What contemporary audiences may easily overlook, and what certainly
resonated with Donizetti's public, is the opera's historical
context. Both Elizabeth and Mary were direct descendants of the
English king Henry VII; the Protestant Elizabeth Tudor was his
granddaughter and Mary Stuart was his great-granddaughter - and
principal Roman Catholic claimant to the English throne. To her
supporters, Mary was also the principal legitimate claimant to the
crown, as the Catholic Church did not recognize the validity of the
marriage of Elizabeth's parents, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. As
Mary Stuart's biographer Antonia Fraser has pointed out in
The
Donizetti Society Journal, the fictional Mary's hasty use of
the epithet "vil bastarda" indicates not just the Scots queen's
desire to insult her cousin but her desire to supplant her. And in
one important sense, Mary did exactly that, for her descendants
have served as England's kings and queens since the childless
Elizabeth's death. At the time of
Maria Stuarda's premiere,
in 1834, a Protestant Hanover, William IV, occupied the English
throne, but in Donizetti's Italy, Mary Stuart was still a powerful
Catholic heroine to a Catholic audience. It is also important to
stress that the face-to-face confrontation of the two queens, who
never met in real life, was Schiller's invention, one that has been
carried through in the numerous movie and television dramatizations
of their lives - from John Ford's
Mary of Scotland (1936),
starring Katharine Hepburn, to the 1971 film
Mary, Queen of
Scots, with Glenda Jackson and Vanessa Redgrave as the sparring
cousins, to the 2005 HBO series
Elizabeth I, with Helen
Mirren.
Although
Stuarda must be assessed as the sum of its parts,
Donizetti's writing for Maria alone qualifies this opera as a
masterwork. Her entrance aria, "O nube! che lieve per l'aria," so
full of nostalgia for France and freedom, introduces a more
advanced Donizetti, and the cabaletta that follows, with its
clipped upward phrases of nervous agitation, expresses perfectly
Maria's fear of Elisabetta, who is approaching. In the course of
composition, as Donizetti's involvement with Maria increased, so
did his inspiration. When Leicester approaches, urging Maria to
meet with the Queen, her agitation increases, but suddenly the
nature of the music changes radically as Maria exits and the
suspicious but far more contained Elisabetta appears. When Maria
reluctantly returns, the Queen's hatred and jealousy are revealed
as she launches the confrontation scene with the dismissive "È
sempre la stessa" (She's always the same). Maria makes an effort at
reconciliation, but her music lets us - and Elisabetta - know that
her pride is intact, and the Queen responds by bringing up Maria's
rather sordid past and suggesting that she has paid for Leicester's
defense with sexual favors. This triggers Maria's loss of control
and her brazen insults, hurled at the queen with minimal
accompaniment, so that the outrageous text is heard in shocking
relief. This coup de théâtre explodes into the thrilling
stretta that ends the act. Through this celebrated
confrontation scene, which subordinates strict musical structure to
drama; the moving confession of her sins to her ally Talbot; and
most notably the trio of arias comprising the final scene,
Donizetti is ablaze with brilliance. Surely, the modulation to C
major during Maria's prayer in E-flat, "Deh! Tu di unumile
preghiera," is a stroke of genius, expressing perfectly her
spiritual transcendence at that moment, as she sustains a long high
G and ascends to A-flat and B-flat, while the melody returns to
E-flat. And the choice of
maestoso for her final cabaletta,
rather than a rapid showpiece tempo, gives her last gesture of
forgiveness as she goes to her death far more grandeur. Pale?
Anything but.
IRA SIFF
is a New York-based voice teacher, interpretation coach
and stage director for opera. He performs as "traumatic soprano"
Madame Vera Galupe-Borszkh.Send feedback to OPERA
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