inaccurate but operatically irresistible confrontation of the two queens, rather quaintly entitled by the composer ‘dialogo delle due regine’. Two prima donnas on stage was an adventurous and controversial idea. Rehearsals for the Naples premiere went well, until the final dress when the two divas in question Giuseppina Ronzi de Begnis and Anna del Sere got carried away in their hatred and the famous scene ended with an onstage brawl. “The ill-will of Mary so enraged Elizabeth, by nature the more voluble of the two, that right in the middle of the finale, she threw herself on her enemy, pulling her hair, hitting her about the ears, biting her, slapping her, and practically breaking her legs by kicking her furiously”. (Teatri, Arti e Letteratura, a periodical of the time). It was the Bourbon King Fernando, however, who threw the final spanner in the works. Officially he feared that the final beheading of Mary could offend the first night audience, in particular his wife Queen Maria Cristina. Not only would the sight of a catholic queen “awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock” offend his wife, but the tradition of Neapolitan happy endings saw Schiller as a dangerous libertarian, and the historical realities of the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth in a politically unstable Italy were deemed a dangerous subject for public consumption. The legend of Mary Queen of Scotts had remained a live political subject in Italy, a regular heroine of plays popular with a dissident public. The carbonari who were associated with anti-government rebels in pre–Risorgimento Italy had their genesis in a plot hatched by Tudor charcoal burners in England who plotted against Elizabeth when she passed a law limiting deforestation. Not surprisingly the Bourbon king of Naples would not have welcomed any subjects likely to involve anti royalist plotting. Donizetti initially proposed renaming the opera Giovanna Gray based on the unfortunate life of Lady Jane Grey, an idea which was also rejected out of hand. Finally a new libretto was quickly cobbled together and the opera was presented with little success as Boundelmont (from Dante’s Paradiso). The première of Maria Stuarda had to wait until the following year at La Scala when the great diva of the day, Maria Malibran, took on the title role. The Prima Donna sketched the designs for her costumes from tombs in Westminster Abbey, but apparently
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was voiceless at the premiere and none other than the painter Delacroix found the way she ripped her handkerchief and gloves to ribbons during a moment of high drama was a little excessive. However no doubt her legendary dramatic commitment allowed her to hurl out the most controversial lines of the libretto in the centerpiece duet with Elizabeth to devastating effect. The passage in question is probably one of the strongest moments in bel canto opera and Mary’s invective “Unchaste daughter of Boleyn, do you speak of dishonour? Base, lascivious whore, let my shame fall on you. Profaned is the English throne, vile bastard, by your foot” is a strong and vulgar outpouring even by today’s standards of royal invective. Typically Italianate language is shamelessly popped into the mouths of the British monarchy. This inability or refusal to ape the social or emotional reactions of another culture has remained a constant in Italian opera. Verdi's merry wives of Windsor in Falstaff have few blue stocking attitudes and Puccini's Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly retains only a dubious flirty reserve to suggest a Japanese geisha before settling down into a last scene which could just as easily be set in Naples. In any case, back in Milan the censors were quickly back on the case of Maria Stuarda and the offending phrases were officially suppressed. However, Malibran, with the composer’s tacit consent or even encouragement, continued to seize on the words with histrionic relish and the work was banned for a second time. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that Donizetti’s Tudor queens claimed their rightful place in the bel canto canon, thanks in great part to the revival of Anna Bolena at La Scala in 1957 with Maria Callas, whose performance revealed, within the formal constraints, a dramatic truth and eloquence in the long flowing bel canto lines. The composer’s characterisation is also far more developed than some critics would believe; the nostalgic nobility of Mary contrasting with the haughty arrogance of Elizabeth is painted by simple but effective musical means, a stabbing staccato here or an unexpected change of key there all suggest that this prolific maestro was absorbed by his characters. This was not the end of Donizetti’s fascination with Elizabeth. In 1837 he returned to his earlier idea of setting Roberto Devereux, further refining his portrait of Elizabeth i, whose operatic career along with Mary