by Gaetano Donizetti
Directed by Stephen Lawless
A Canadian Opera Company Production
at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
May 1, 4, 10, 13, 22, 26, 28, 30, 2010

   The Canadian Opera Company production of Donizetti’s opera (Bardari’s libretto adapted by Andrea Maffei) is a mixed success. The score is quite lovely, with cavatina leading into cabaletta and building the drama through duets and trios, accelerating the tempo, fortifying the structure, and consolidating the stately yet effortless phrases. Anthony Walker conducts brilliantly, and the orchestra responds with admirable finesse, with light touches in the comedy and deepening darkness in the heavier sequences. But Donizetti’s opera doesn’t have the wider circumference of Schiller’s drama. Its libretto scales down the cast of characters and the historical complexity of Mary Tudor’s clashes with Elizabeth I, and though the seething Catholic-Protestant animosity is palpably manifest, the essential drama seems to revolve around amatory passion. Elizabeth suspects that the Earl of Leicester is in love with her political prisoner, Mary, and though there is no historical basis for Elizabeth’s love interest in Leicester, fact does not get in the way of the opera. We already know that there was never a real meeting between Mary and Elizabeth at Fotheringay, but artists are always permitted some license in the interest of dramatic truth and scale, so this inaccuracy hardly matters, except that Donizetti rarely matches Schiller when it comes to flaring, gigantic antagonism. And truth to tell, neither Bulgarian soprano Alexandrina Pendatchanska’s Elisabetta nor Italian soprano Serena Farnocchia’s Maria even comes close to a ringing silhouette of each one’s historical counterpart or to the depth or height of the greatest acting ever seen in these roles. Pendatchanska, in fact, is rather dim in several passages, though she certainly rises to the opportunity for finally delivering a balanced interpretation of the imperious yet vulnerable queen. Farnocchia has a steadier vocal compass—at least on the night I saw the production—and she relishes her opportunity to produce a gorgeous aria out of Maria’s pessimism. The two sopranos duel well in the climactic scene in Act II, going for the groin rather than the jugular, in a manner of speaking, and sealing the end of Maria.

   There are praiseworthy elements. Though Ingeborg Berneth’s costumes play the stereotypical mixed period game in the final Act, they have period flair and detail prior to this. Benoit Dugardyn’s set design of three open galleries, a central platform, and large curtains suggests something of the Elizbethan Globe Theatre, with the curtains and theatrical setting becoming a metaphor for the queens’ dual selves—public and private—and with the two large drawbridges contributing to the sense of drama. The director’s conceit, of course, is that each queen epitomizes two natures: that of a divinely appointed and invulnerable monarch, and that of a flawed and troubled individual. However, for such a conceit to really work requires greater acting than I saw from the two sopranos. Nevertheless, the compensations are in other performances. Ileana Montalbetti is a fairly good Anna Kennedy, while the three male courtiers are even better. Weston Hurt is a burly Cecil, his baritone being commanding, while Eric Cutler’s Earl of Leicester sings superbly, and is turned into a dominant figure after filtering into the action from the top gallery. He does, however, need to expand his acting range. The most impressive vocal performance, apart from his, is Patrick Carfizzi’s Talbot, a bantamweight bass-baritone with real weight and shading.

   No one but Donizetti and his librettist can be blamed for the angelic transformation of Maria in the final Act. It is too unconvincing, both as history and as drama, and it does not help at all to have Maria decked out in full regalia, with glittering crown and robes, as she prepares for her own execution. This is carrying hagiography too far, and it robs the score of an ultimate tragic finale, for the mood becomes more serene and triumphantly exalting rather than shivery with harrowing pathos.  

photos:Michael Cooper

pic 1: Alexandrina Pendatchanska (Elisabetta) and Eric Cutler (Roberto, Earl of Leicester)

pic 2: Serena Farnocchia (Maria Stuarda) and Eric Cutler (Roberto, Earl of Leicester)

pic 3 (L-R): Weston Hurt (Lord Cecil), Alexandrina Pendatchnska (Elisabetta) and Eric Cutler (Roberto, Earl of Leicester)


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