OPERA
MARIA STUARDA ★★★☆
Melbourne Opera
Athenaeum Theatre
Maria Stuarda is an Italian opera based on a German play about English history that never happened – a confrontation between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, which leads to the latter's execution. Much more challenging to English speakers brought up on good Queen Bess is that to Catholic Europe, including Donizetti: she is the villain and the feckless Mary is the tragic heroine.
Melbourne Opera has staged this fine, under-performed opera with aplomb.
Elena Xanthoudakis, the Australian soprano now forging a career in Europe, is thrilling in the title role: haughty yet vulnerable, agile and secure in the formidable technical demands. Matching her, tenor Henry Choo is near-faultless as the Earl of Leicester, singing with ardour and beautiful tone. They are electric together.
Rosamund Illing, blazingly implacable as Elizabeth, can still spin a beautiful pianissimo, and the confrontation scene is tremendous. Eddie Muliaumaseali'i (Cecil), Phillip Calcagno (Talbot) and Caroline Vercoe (Anna) are all good.
Conductor Richard Divall – experienced in this work – and director Suzanne Chaundy are a fine team, complementing each other in highlighting the opera's dramatic moments but also its tenderness and beauty.
Christina Logan-Bell's sets are spare but effective, while Lauren Ritchie's costumes (from the Opera Australia production) are sumptuous – but some of the money would have been better spent on the orchestra, which was thin and erratic, especially the strings. The choir also had a few doubtful moments and the clumsy English translation was often at odds with the shape of the musical phrase.