Donizetti: Maria Stuarda [Blu-ray] [2011]

Maria Stuarda has a special place in my operatic heart. The first performance I attended as a teenager had the considerable skills of Leyla Gencer and Shirley Verrett as the two queens, and subsequent performances over the years have hit or missed the mark dependent on the qualities of the two leading protagonists.

This performance from Venice is directed and designed by Denis Krief. Mr Krief is certainly a talented stage director and in this contemporary staging removes the historical setting and places the work in a maze in which both Elizabeth and Mary are both trapped. Eschewing the political and concentrating on the emotional, he gives the story a resonance which I certainly enjoyed. The costumes are perfunctory, and the first scene looks unfortunately like a chaufeurs meet duennas convention, but as the opera progresses, they at least do not irritate. The set is versatile and very well used, although the lighting can be very garish.

However, the singing is the main thing and here we have a generally fine cast. Sonia Ganassi is on top form as Elizabeth, singing with nuance and exemplary bel canto style. Fiorenza Cedolins has a tendency to over ornament so that the musical line somtimes disappears, but she is a formidable artist who comes into her own particularly in the second act prayer and finale. Jose Bros is not gifted with natural acting skills but his soft singing is very fine although the top of the stave finds his voice less appealing. Smaller roles are well taken and overall this is a very good performance of the opera. The Blu Ray has excellent picture quality and the singers are well recorded. Only the chorus sounds distant and the applause, which has been cut during the performance is so faint, it may be coming from a bar in Murano! However these are small points which do not seriously affect ones enjoyment. Recommended.

Those wishing a more traditional staging will find much to commend in the ENO version ( sung in english) with Janet Baker as a mezzo Mary Stuart which is available on DVD.

One might expect a certain amount of historical detail and political intrigue in an opera about the English crown during the turbulent Tudor era but, based on a play by Friedrich Schiller, Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, like many of his bel canto historical works, keeps the plot and the psychology relatively simple, relating to it more on a romantic than a political level. Here, the political element is practically non-existent, the rivalry that lies between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth being for the affections of the Earl of Leicester, and the dominant tone - powerfully stated - is one of the deepest jealousy.

"Is she pretty?", Elisabeth can't help herself asking Leicester who has just delivered a message from Mary and has shown indifference to the news that she is considering a marriage proposal from France, and you can imagine her reaction when Leicester has the indelicacy of detailing Mary's virtues in loving tones while, strangely in this production, his hands are wandering all over her. The latter point highlights the problem that Denis Krief has with staging the opera. There is really no action, the characters just stand around and sing, and with no great depth to the love-triangle rivalry, the stage director is left to just emphasise, and in some cases inappropriately overstate, those surface emotions that are brought out in the libretto.

The opera works well on that surface level, but it's mostly through its expression in Donizetti's simple but sizzling score and the delivery of those bitter cat-fighting moments in the extraordinary challenging arias, more than through anything that the staging comes up with. There may not be much to get to grips with in the plot, the acting is stiff and weak (mainly on account of the characters having nothing to do), but if you want to see a mezzo and a soprano tear strips off each other vocally, and coming close to physical violence (there are looks that could kill here), then Sonia Ganassi as Elizabeth and Fiorenza Cedolins as Mary, deliver that in the most powerful manner. Inevitably, the soprano is going to win in the singing stakes, Cedolins having plenty of extravagant arias with all the coloratura, and she delivers them with remarkable control and force, but Ganassi's Elizabeth has the more juicy lines in the libretto and devastating put-downs. Coming between these two powerful women, the thin tenor voice of José Bros can't help but seem a bit lost, hitting the notes well enough, but with a tone that isn't the most pleasant to the ear.

If a stage director is wise then, he will also just keep out of the way and let the two women get on with it, and to a large extent that's what Krief does. There is no period setting, the costumes are generic traditional rather than modern, there are practically no props whatsoever, the stage converted into a tilted forward labyrinth (reminiscent of the Berlin Holocaust memorial or, less kindly, like a Pac-Man arena when it is populated by moving characters) that does nevertheless give emphasis to the romantic intrigue through its lighting and shadows. It's not particularly imaginative or dynamic, but it looks fine and works through its very simplicity. There's not much drama then, no real staging to speak of, not much in the way of acting or movement - it might as well be a concert performance - but the opera works through its musical vibrancy and some terrific arias alone.

On Blu-ray, the stage setting and the lighting come across exceptionally well, and the audio tracks are just as impressive, voices ringing clear, the orchestration beautifully defined, the strings in particular being dominant, with deep rounded bass in the low-frequency range. The audience however sounds strangely muted in the surround mix. There is a little bit of ambient noise or low microphone feedback on a few moments, but nothing that affects the overall impact. There are no extra features on the disc, just some brief notes on the opera and its staging, with a similarly short synopsis.

Who is Krief? He is the guy who is overall in charge of what happens on stage with the thankful exception of the music. Thank heavens for such mercies.

If one wants to 'see' what Anachronism means, they only have to see the Stage Direction, Sets and Lighting Design of this otherwise great production of Maria Stuarda.

Whatever I want to comment on the singing, conducting and sound and video etc has already been elucidated beautifully by the two persons who wrote the comments ahead of me, Keris Nine and J.Aitken. They are on the dot. However, I beg to differ from Mr. Aitken about the staging.

There is nothing imaginative here. The whole thing looks like a maze or labyrinth through which the actors scamper about like rats. It represents nothing... not even the so called 'trap' that both the ladies are supposed to be in. Ultimately it slides and exposes what looks like an exoskeleton of some monster or just plain scaffolding prior to concreting a slab of a construction work in progress. The lighting - less said about it the better.
I don't know who did the acting direction, but that seems to come a cropper too, with the two women being pawed and almost fondled (?) at scenes and sequences that in no way point to any kind of even abstract eroticism or whatever these guys were trying to portray.

Krief is, according to me, guilty of almost single-handedly ruining this production with his antics. He seems to be trying to be different for the sake of being different and cannot come up with anything better. If this is the face of what is supposed to be 'intellectual', then sorry, I am an Idiot.

I don't think I am the only one who has this opinion.
Just see the top of the back cover of this very disc,wherein, unwittingly or not, the producer of the inlay cover has printed a small comment from the Frankfurt Allegemeine Zeitung about this disc, which coyly states "To conjure up ...hatred and jealousy, you don't need a stage setting, just two splendid Prima Donnas"... oh how I love the double meaning in that.

To tell you the truth, if all actors had been on an empty stage with a blank curtain background, the whole production could have been, in comparison, even deemed 'brilliant' insofar as staging is concerned. After all, there is not too much 'acting' involved and that seems to suit Jose Cura quite well - he is no actor.

BUT

I would still recommend this blu ray disc to anyone. The singing is simply divine. The orchestra is lively although sometimes overpowering (in the opening chorus, you can barely hear the chorus). Honestly, I did enjoy tremendously everything except what I have written above, and I do not think we are going to get hold of another Maria Stuarda of this quality of cast, chorus and orchestra for a long time.