Small picture of Donizetti

 

 

 

Donizetti's Mary, Queen of Scots (Maria Stuarda)

English Touring Opera, Spring 2005

 

 

English Touring Opera is currently touring Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, renamed by them Mary, Queen of Scots.  

Reaction from members and critics has been very positive.

Mary and Leicester 

The Times speaks of   "The odds are against the success of this new ETO repertoire — small orchestra, in English, no Joan Sutherland — but it is dynamite"  and The Guardian says that it " lays bare the work's ambiguities more powerfully than many previous stagings".  

 

The cast includes:-

Mary (Anne Mason)

Elizabeth (Jennifer Rhys Davies, also Sarah Rhodes in some later performances)

Leicester (Nicholas Ransley)

Talbot (Charles Johnson)

Cecil (Andrew Rupp)

 The director was James Conway, the designer Soutra Gilmour  and conductor Noel Davies.

The pictures of the production were taken by Keith Pattison and provided courtesy of English Touring Opera.

Elizabeth and the crown

Elizabeth and the crown

 

 

Elizabeth at prayer

Elizabeth at Prayer

 

Mary and Leicester

Mary and Leicester

 

The confrontation between Elizabeth and Mary

 

Further view of confrontation

Another view of the confrontation between Elizabeth and Mary

 

Confrontation 2

A further view of the confrontation between Elizabeth and Mary

 

Mary and Cecil

Cecil delivers the judgement to Mary

 

Queen of dissent: Mary Stuart and the opera in her honour by Carlo Coccia, by Alexander Weatherson gives the background of the opera and, in particular, its relationship to an earlier Mary Stuart opera by Coccia.   

 

 

 

Page initially published in  2009