Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda at Salzburg Competition, directed by Ulrich Rasche with Lisette Oropesa & Kate Lindsey

For Act One, the discs had been in motion all through; even when ‘stationary’ the performers had been transferring, strolling throughout the transferring stage. Past this, expressive motion was a part of the singers’ dramatic entire. After we first noticed Kate Lindsey’s Elisabetta her physique language instructed of anguish and anxiousness. Every of the 2 protagonists saved to her personal disc and color iconography, black for Elisabetta, white for Maria.

The end result was purely summary, a chunk of kinetic theatre the place motion expressed the private drama. Nonetheless, given Donizetti’s tendency to bouncy accompaniments and the choreography’s reliance on rhythmic motion to the music, there have been moments that relatively came to visit as dangerous Gilbert & Sullivan. In spite of everything, Donizetti is one in all Sullivan’s fashions.

Donizetti: Maria Stuarda – Bekhzod Davronov – Salzburg Competition (Picture: SF/Monika Rittershaus)

The iconography was intriguing, to say the least. After we first noticed her, Kate Lindsey’s Elisabetta regarded and moved remarkably like Martha Graham as Medea in her Cave of the Coronary heart! Elisabetta’s courtiers had been all in black, although Sara Schwartz’s costumes for the dancers appeared to veer in the direction of relatively horny sheer black for the lads’s tops – all however one of many dancers was male. Within the second act, Maria’s supporters had been sporting simply white loincloths which gave their interactions with Lisette Oropesa’s Maria a considerably sexual picture, particularly as at one level the dancers’ writhing mass resembled an iconic Nineteen Seventies album cowl.

This strategy left little scope for growing the characters of Leicester (Bekhzod Davronov), Talbot (Aleksei Kulagin) and Cecil (Thomas Lehman). Rasche appeared enthusiastic about them solely inasmuch as they interacted with the 2 protagonists. The main focus was on Maria and Elisabetta.

Casting for these two roles has remained fluid because of the opera’s chequered historical past. Donizetti wrote it for Naples for 2 sopranos (a kind by which it’s hardly ever carried out these days) however it solely ever reached the costume rehearsal earlier than censors obtained concerned. Curiosity from Maria Malibran meant the opera obtained a contemporary begin in Milan with Donizetti adjusting the function of Maria to go well with the decrease tessitura of Malibran’s voice. Censorship reared its head once more and the opera by no means achieved sufficient definitive performances to ascertain a casting norm.

Donizetti: Maria Stuarda – Nino Gotoshia, Lisette Oropesa – Salzburg Competition (Picture: SF/Monika Rittershaus)

Twentieth century revivals (hampered by the truth that the autograph solely reappeared within the Eighties with a vital version in 1989) tended to assign one of many roles to a mezzo-soprano so famously Janet Baker sang Maria at English Nationwide Opera with a pair of dramatic sopranos (Pauline Tinsley, then Rosalind Plowright) as Elisabetta. Joan Sutherland was a soprano Maria with Huguette Tourangeau as a mezzo-soprano Elisabetta. Personally, in Salzburg’s casting I missed the dramatic chunk that the correct soprano voice can carry to Elisabetta, for all Kate Lindsey’s dramatic perspicacity.

One downside was that the huge expanses of the Grosses Festspielhaus stage are usually not concept for Donizetti. With the Vienna Philharmonic within the relatively shallow pit each protagonists generally did not adequately venture within the center register. In fact, that Ulrich Rasche’s manufacturing positioned his singers unhelpfully upstage didn’t assist both.

However there was a lot to get pleasure from and Rasche’s strategy, significantly within the ultimate scene, was astonishing and I can solely commend the best way the soloists integrated his motion and physicality into their performances. This was very a lot a competition manufacturing, few opera homes might afford the time wanted to carry this off.

Donizetti: Maria Stuarda – Nino Gotoshia, Bekhzod Davronov, Aleksei Kulagin, Lisette Oropesa, Kate Lindsey – Salzburg Competition (Picture: SF/Monika Rittershaus)

Lisette Oropesa made an engagingly plangent Maria, pleasant in her enjoyment of the open areas in her first scene but proud and authoritarian within the the rest of the act. Her interplay with Kate Lindsey’s Elisabetta was masterly and we might see the proud haughtiness rising from behind the masks.

Her scene with Aleksei Kulagin’s sympathetic Talbot in Act Two was a masterpiece of double communicate. Oropesa managed to make Maria’s confession touching and transferring in order that when she stated she went to the scaffold harmless, we imagine her. The prayer was all the things it wanted to be and the closing scene, with the descending third disc and writhing, scantily clad younger males, was merely astonishing.

Ulrich Rasche’s imaginative and prescient lexicon for Elisabetta was closely freighted in the direction of remorse and anxiousness, but Donizetti’s music for the character requires a form of whip-lash strategy. Kate Lindsey managed each, making her vocal responses look like a lashing out at instances. Her voice lacked the chunk that the function wanted however she compensated with sheer intelligence. She made a splendidly contrasting reverse to Lisette Oropesa and the 2 had been finely matched.

Rasche’s strategy meant that we generally noticed the opposite lady when the music centered elsewhere, in order that Elisabetta was by no means removed from Maria and vice versa. A feminine dancer doubled as each, thus giving a relentless presence all through the motion sections.

Donizetti: Maria Stuarda – Thomas Lehman, Kate Lindsey – Salzburg Competition (Picture: SF/Monika Rittershaus)

Bekhzod Davronov made an admirable Leicester, a task whose solely perform appears to be in love with Maria and to harass Elisabetta. Davronov did this effectively, managing to counsel a sure uprightness of angle although often relapsing into stiffness. He had a properly heroic tang to his tone however was fluid and versatile sufficient with the Donizettian line. All in all, a fascinating efficiency and I’d like to see him in a extra rewarding bel canto function.

Aleksei Kulagin as Talbot solely actually got here into his personal within the nice Act Two scene with Lisette Oropesa’s Maria when she confessed all. While it was Oropesa’s touching efficiency that drew our consideration, Kulagin definitely made the conflicted determine of Talbot suitably sympathetic. Thomas Lehman supplied agency assist as Cecil, managing to make slightly extra of the function than its few gruff moments. Nino Gotoshia, one of many contributors within the competition’s Younger Singers Mission, was a sympathetic Anna (a thankless function, frankly).

I’m not certain whether or not it was an odd acoustical impact or sheer dilatoriness however the Vienna State Opera Refrain’ efficiency generally appeared behind the beat. And apart from, there have been moments corresponding to through the Act Two prayer after we missed their bodily presence on stage interacting with the protagonists.

Within the pit, Antonello Manacorda, the Vienna Philharmonic and the gamers from their Summer time Academy had been alert and thrilling from the phrase go. Manacorda introduced out the music’s sense of drama however allowed the lyric moments to breathe. This was a efficiency attuned to Donizetti’s rating as actual music, not simply as accompaniment for the singers.

Donizetti: Maria Stuarda – Salzburg Competition (Picture: SF/Monika Rittershaus)

This was a type of performances that demanded that you simply take it by itself phrases. Ulrich Rasche was by no means going to create something like a standard manufacturing and his summary, kinetic music theatre strategy, although there have been issues, in the end did certainly create a profoundly putting visible interpretation.