OPERA REVIEW: MARIA STUARDA
3 May'10

‘Maria Stuarda’ musically superb

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4 out of 5

Despite the received wisdom of a lot of high school teachers, history is not a martini to be served straight up and dry as dust. Give us history that is stretched and torn and sweat-stained from the battle to claim it as the ultimate truth, a history more redolent of victory and heartache than historic fact — and suddenly it all comes alive.

That’s the kind of history lesson the Canadian Opera Company is trying to serve up with a new production of Gaetano Donizetti’s MARIA STUARDA, a production on loan from the Dallas Opera Company. MARIA STUARDA opened at the Four Seasons Centre Saturday.

For the uninitiated, Donizetti’s opera features a libretto by Giuseppe Bardari which is in turn based on Friedrich von Schiller’s MARIA STUART — a play about a woman better remembered as Mary, Queen of Scots. But how she is remembered depends on which history books you’ve read — and clearly, Schiller’s references were a lot more anti-Tudor and pro-Catholic than most available in a world informed as much by the Anglican faith as William Shakespeare’s often forgiving view of the Tudor dynasty.

Set to Donizetti’s sweeping score, the entire opera in three acts pivots around a confrontation between the Maria of title — magnificently sung by soprano Serena Farnocchia — and her regal cousin, Elisabetta, known to the world as Elizabeth I of England, sung by soprano Alexandrina Pendatchanska.

It’s a confrontation that history tells us could have never happened as the two women never met — but it’s not the first time history has been enriched by the operatic equivalent of poetic license. And though they battle about politics and religion, in this opera, the object at the very centre of this catfight most royal is none other than Roberto, Earl Of Leicester — the putative lover of England’s virgin Queen, and sometime-supporter of the exiled Scottish queen - sung here by tenor Eric Cutler.

These are three magnificent voices, joined by bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi, baritone Weston Hurt and soprano Ileana Montalbetti in supporting roles and from the get-go — underscored as they are by the COC Orchestra, under the assured baton of Antony Walker — they promise a spectacular staging. It’s all set on a regal evocation of an Elizabethan theatre, surrounding a raised platform on and around which all the action takes place, observed by members of the glorious COC Chorus, all in period dress.

But while Benoit Dugardyn’s concept of court life as theatre is strong, it loses a lot in execution, thanks to some jerry-built drawbridges which leave one with the disquieting feeling that certain cast members may well be at risk of either toppling onto the stage or being driven into it.

As used by director Stephen Lawless, that set proves even more problematic as characters sprawl all over its stairs in a fashion that is nothing even close to regal, particularly when they are impeded by massive skirts and bizarre pumpkin breeches. And while he does a fair job of keeping things moving on the stage, he ignores some pretty basic stage rules, allowing Cutler to get away with the kind of egregious upstaging — squirming and playing with his sword — that might have cost the real Leicester his head in a Tudor court.

It’s easy to forgive opera for being historically suspect, but only its superb music makes it possible to forgive it, albeit somewhat grudgingly, for being sloppy theatre.