ABTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Radio: Opera Had Troubles

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31097, 28 June 1966, Page 12

ABTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Radio: Opera Had Troubles

i In March the Christchurch soprano Marie Landis was praised by London critics for her singing in the title role of Donizetti’s opera ‘‘Maria Stuarda” when the English premiere was given at the St Pancras Festival. It was a lucky occasion for the soprano, who sang here as Marie Sutherland, and a remarkable change in fortune for the 130-year-old work, which had the reputation of being a “bad luck” work. The triumph of the festival performances will be recalled when some excerpts are broadcast from 3YC on Thursday at 8.3 p.m. “Maria Stuarda” has had a trouble-plagued career and the troubles began before it saw the light of day. During rehearsals for the first performance, which was planned for the San Carlo at Naples, a dispute arose between Guiseppina Ronzi de Begnis and Anna Delserre, the two prima donnas who were interpreting the roles of the conflicting queens, Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor.

Donizetti wrote to a friend that “the malicious acts, the spiteful doings, the backbiting of la Ronzi and la Delserre had an enormous field for maneouvre all through the rehearsals.” One day de Begnis grabbed

Delserre by the hair and whacked her so hard that she took two weeks to recover. Rehearsals only resumed under an “armed truce.” QUEEN FAINTED Things went well again until the dress rehearsal to which an audience of royalty and nobility was invited. The powerful music and drama enthralled most of the audience, but the scenes of Mary Stuart’s condemnation by her royal cousin and the depiction of her execution (this was offstage, witnessed by a horror-stricken crowd on the stage) so upset Maria Christina, Queen of the Two Sicilies, that she fainted. The royal censors refused to allow a performance on the following night.

Donizetti could have found a kingdom willing to allow the opera to be performed, but he refused to have the premiere elsewhere in case the public prejudged the opera unfavourably. He spent six weeks “cobbling” and adapted all the music to another libretto, a play about the much safer subject of the twelfthcentury rebellion of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. It was a flop. CHURCH CENSORSHIP Donizetti returned to “Maria Stuarda” in the next year and after a lot of negotiation had the work performed in Milan with the

great Maria Malibran in the title role. Even so, the opera was subject to religious censorship. The Church refused to allow Mary to call her cousin “bastard” and Mary was not allowed to kneel before the lay-priest Talbot in the confession scene.

The opera later enjoyed moderate success in Italy in the 1840 s and in Germany in the 1860 s.

When the opera was revived for the first time this century at Donizetti’s birthplace, Bergamo, in 1958, the jinx was still with it for the

Mary was unable to sing and had to be replaced by an understudy. “Maria Stuarda” was produced in 1963 at Stuttgart, but the tenor lost his voice and the curtain fell 10 minutes after the opening. It was produced in New York in 1964 and nearly did not make the scheduled opening because the orchestral parts —the only set in existence—were delayed on the way from Bergamo’s Donizetti Library. FURTHER TROUBLES Even the St. Pancras production was beset by troubles. The orchestral parts were tied up in a customs dispute on their return to Italy from the United States. The festival organisers were able, at great expense, to have parts copied from a microfilm of the only surviving orchestral score—a pencil-copied version full of copyist’s mistakes.! superimposed corrections of; several conductors, and erasures by other conductors., The second New Zealander in the cast, Bryan Drake, was suffering from laryngitis, but valiantly went on as Talbot. The limelight of the revival was evidently well worth the tribulations, but should “Maria Stuarda” not be performed again for some time, it is obvious that the reasons have nothing to do with the musical or dramatic value of the work.