Opera Reviews
29 March 2024
Untitled Document

Rossini's rarely heard opera gets the royal treatment from ETO



by Catriona Graham
Rossini: Elisabetta, Regina d'Inghliterra
English Touring Opera
April 2019
Mary Plazas (Elizabeth)

‘What use’, muses the Queen, ‘is a secure throne to a wretched woman’, in the English Touring Opera production of Rossini’s Elizabeth I, directed by James Conway – the translator of Giovanni Schmidt’s libretto is not named. The dashing Earl of Leicester has returned from defeating the Scots with a couple of hostages – to his consternation, they turn out to be Mary Queen of Scots’ hitherto unknown children Matilde and Enrico. Even worse, he has clandestinely married Matilde – not a good move with the Queen as a jealous lover.

If David Lynn’s Leicester seems less Errol Flynn and more dazed and confused, it is not because he was plucked from the chorus to stand-in for the indisposed Luciano Botelho; rather it is because, general though he be, he is consistently out-manoeuvred by the two strong women in his life.

Mary Plazas inhabits rather than wears her regal garb – the corseted top in particular like a carapace. She has some great arias with fiendish runs. As Matilde, Lucy Hall indulges the impetuosity that Elizabeth must foreswear. Her voice is warm and soars over the running passages. In their second act duet, Mathilde is the suppliant, Elizabeth harsh, but her voice never sounds hard.

Norfolk is constantly conniving. He betrays the confidence of Leicester, he then seeks to foment rebellion, all the time thinking he’s the smartest kid on the block – which is where he ends up. John-Colyn Gyeantey’s light tenor catches the smooth duplicity of the character.

Emma Stannard as Enrico has little to do except cower, whimper and be clutched by her hysterical sister. Like the others, however, she is in the ensembles. When Norfolk has betrayed Leicester to the Queen, Elizabeth plots revenge by granting her lover the crown as king consort. The Queen, Leicester, Mathilde and Enrico’s quartet about cold death being blown on their shocked faces is particularly effective.
Elsewhere, orchestral instruments are as much part of the ensemble as the voices – Leicester’s prison aria is almost a duet with flute. John Andrews conducts the orchestra with verve – lest the audience think it has come on the wrong night, side-titles helpfully point out that the overture was recycled for Il barbiere di Siviglia.

Frankie Bradshaw’s minimalist set features a tapestry-esque backdrop of fleur-de-lis, tudor roses and crowns, a plain wooden throne and a canopy which turns into a prison gate. The black-clad chorus are rarely absent from the stage, either as courtiers or ‘the people’, as a crowd or an escort, emphasising the public and political nature of the private drama. Effective lighting from Rory Beaton catches them in the fringes of the action or throws them as silhouettes against a bloody backlight.

It finishes with the (temporary) restoration of Leicester to her good graces, Elizabeth declares herself ‘married’ to her people and greets them much as she did in her first entrance.

Throughout it all, Joseph Doody’s Guglielmo (Cecil) carries out the Queen’s instructions and keeps his own counsel; as we know from history, he also kept his own head.

Text © Catriona Graham
Photo © Richard Hubert Smith
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