Handel - Deidamia (Wexford, 2025)

George Frideric Handel - Deidamia 

Wexford Festival Opera, 2025

George Petrou, Sophie Junker, Sarah Gilford, Bruno de Sá, Nicolò Balducci, Rory Musgrave, Petros Magoulas

O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 22nd October 2025

For a festival that specialises in rare opera, it's not unknown for the occasional 18th century baroque and opera seria works to be performed at the Wexford Festival Opera, although to do so authentically usually requires a specialised early music orchestra or ensemble. Since the theme of this year's festival however is build around Myths and Legends - a mainstay of early opera - opera seria is the place to find plenty of great rarely performed operas, of which Handel's 1741 Deidamia is definitely a rarity. The composer's final opera before he turned his attention in later years to oratorio, it's perhaps not so great when measured alongside his next work Messiah, also in 1741, but all Handel's operas are worth exploring. If there was a brief from the Wexford Festival's artistic director that the focus of each of the operas should be on the human element to make the legend relevant to real people today, director George Petrou seems to have taken that brief literally.

Dealing with an obscure incident in Homer's Odyssey, where Odysseus travels to the island of Skyros searching for Achilles who is needed for the upcoming battle in Troy, it does seem a little bit strange just to overlay the Greek legend with some modern day tourists walking around the same Greek island taking selfies in the background, complete with projections of Wish You Were Here postcards. You would think the serious music of Handel wouldn't be able to sustain these two separate narratives, but by making some of the modern day travellers concerns similar to those of the ancient Greeks, it does succeed in making it a little more relevant, or at least sparks a little more interest. It's a good strategy since, taken on its own terms, Handel can often appear to be a bit dry, when - as Ddavid Alden recognised in the Dutch National Opera production of this work - there is actually quite a measure of humour built into the story and the music.

As both stage director and conductor, George Petrou is clearly aware of this and this concept consequently works very well, with both ancient and modern given equal attention. The little dramas of a bunch of privileged luxury tour holiday makers are perhaps not quite equal in importance (you might think), but Petrou strikes a balance where one gives equal emotional and meaningful weight to the other. The focus is of course on what is being sung and played out by the main figures in the ancient Greek drama, but essentially the concept emphasises the fact that the same concerns remain for all of us in the present day. Not that anyone today would start a catastrophic war with a nation over someone stealing their first lady. Or at least you would hope not, but you couldn't even count on that security in today's world.

If that were all that there was to it, presenting a necessary modern perspective on an ancient legend, it would be a valid approach, but Petrou doesn't settle for such simple parallels. Every scene ambitiously employs a new setting, using different special effects, new technology and projections in addition to traditionally impressive sets and effective lighting. All of it is in the service of making the production visually engaging, and if you engage visually as well as emotionally, you engage with the singing and the music, which can otherwise appear routine and repetitive. In reality, although Deidamia marked his retirement from writing opera, it is far from routine. Petrou, controlling the stage as well as the orchestra in the pit, knows how the music serves every scene with drama, emotion, tenderness and concern; all the necessary human qualities in the work, even if it is not the composer's most inspired or celebrated piece.

The plot and libretto don't exactly mark any important event in the story of the Odyssey. Well, it is based around the need to have the war machine that is Achilles join the assembled Greek fleet on its way to Troy, but since it has been foretold that Achilles will die on Trojan soil, his father has hidden him on the island, dressed as a girl under the name Pyrrha. Essentially the whole opera then is an attempt by two Greek commanders Odysseus and Phönix (both also going under assumed names) to discover the whereabouts of the warrior and get him to join the siege on Troy. Evidently, since there are disguises and cross-dressing involved and since Achilles is not great about hiding his manly interests in hunting and killing, this involves a few mishaps and misunderstandings, none of which in themselves are particularly original or humorous.

But George Petrou's Wexford production nonetheless makes the most of every situation. The sensitive direction, not without a sense of humour in where the two worlds cross over and occasionally interact, helps bring this out. The spectacular and inventive effects that set and costume designer Giorgina Germanou realises suit every mood from stormy seas, thunderous downpours, a classical vase design that turns out to be a modern fashion dress, animated sequences, an undersea scene and even a cheesy - and quite impressive - movie trailer. There is no end of inventiveness, none of it employed arbitrarily. The intention is to avoid static scenes, keep movement going and match the rhythms and moods of Handel's score without distracting from the essence of the dramatic flow.

In fact it actually supports the premise well. While all the plot revolves around Ulysses/Antilochus falling in love with a man dressed as a woman, or pretending to, and the (real) women trying to simultaneously fight off the advances of men while at the same time trying to woo them away from uncovering Achilles' true identity, (and in the case of Nerea falling in love in the process), the serious side is not neglected. It's the modern day inserts that help us to see this. At the end of the romantic comedy drama there is a long and brutal war that will take place and Achilles knows he will die in it. The duty and the solemnity of that hits home in the final scenes, again with projections contrasting the movie trailer epic seen earlier with the harsh reality of war that we are very familiar with witnessing at the moment.

Deidamia has two main roles that can be played by females dressed as men: one a man (Antilochus), the other a man pretending to be a woman (Achilles as Pyrrha). It avoids some confusion and disorientation - but not much - if both roles are undertaken as they are here by male countertenors, and we had two fine countertenors here with Nicolò Balducci as Ulysses and Bruno de Sá as Achilles. Balducci in particular was a standout performer here, but de Sá played up the badly pretend-female role well in an energetic performance. Rather than it being a showcase for singers, Handel actually balances out the roles well for the requirements of the drama, giving just as much attention to Deidamia as her friend Nerea, sung well here by Sophie Junker and Sarah Gilford. Likewise it provided the opportunity for Rory Musgrave and Petros Magoulas to make significant contributions as as Phönix and Lycomede.

Still Deidamia is perhaps not a great Handel opera or the most thrillingly plotted, but it's a masterful one nonetheless and one that was definitely worthwhile reviving (among many potential Handel and opera seria candidates) for this year's Wexford Festival Opera's Myths & Legends theme. Like all baroque opera, there is always the danger of three hours of da capo arias being a bit of a chore if not handled sensitively and respectfully, but the key is also not to do it too reverentially. The balance here in this production conducted and directed by George Petrou is ideal, with the music providing dramatic drive and tone that the visual extravagance and performances matched impressively. Very impressively indeed.

External links: Wexford Festival Opera

Bizet - La tragédie de Carmen (Wexford, 2025)

Georges Bizet - La tragédie de Carmen

Wexford Festival Opera, 2025

Rebecca Warren, Nate Ben-Horin, Tom Deazley, Sarah Richmond, Dafydd Allen, Philip Kalmanovitch, Roisín Walsh, Conor Cooper, Vladimir Sima, Jonah Halton

Jerome Hynes Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 22nd October 2025

There comes a time surely when you don't feel the need to see another traditional Carmen. I know I reached that point a long time ago. There may also come a point also when you think that you don't need to see another attempt to rework and reinterpret Bizet's opera through a modern, feminist perspective of social commentary. Fortunately opera is a living art, and if a work is good enough there are always relevant truths and new meanings that can be explored. There ought to be a way to get back to the essence of the work, strip away all the accumulated mannerisms, old-fashioned values and imposed modern reinterpretations and just get back to the human heart of the work. Well, with Carmen there already is, and it's called La tragédie de Carmen. Proof of how effective this work can still be as an opera is made apparent in this production directed by Tom Deazley, further stripped down to its essentials as a 'Pocket opera' at Wexford Festival Opera.

La tragédie de Carmen is an unusual case. Many operas have been adapted and reworked for other media - a Broadway musical or a movie adaptation - and it's common for an opera to be drawn from an existing theatre piece, but not so common for an opera to be taken back to form a closer relationship with its source material. The history of Bizet's own experience with Carmen at the Opéra-Comique is complicated enough, but aside from going back to the original Prosper Mérimée novella, Peter Brooke and Jean-Claude Carrière's opera-theatrical reworking of the material has become a popular way of presenting a work that it has to be said has become over-familiar, to the extent that perhaps its original meaning has been obscured. If you want to assess the essence and worth of any drama, it's surely to be found in the validity of its human story. That is very much the focus of Tom Deazley’s production.

Of course individuals only behave within or in reaction to the rules society places on them, so it is important to ensure that the story has context. Carmen, by choosing to act outside the normal rules of behaviour in respectable society can be seen as proto-feminist, but how she does that in her promiscuity and criminality is hardly one that could be considered by many as much of a role model. But then with a few exceptions - and none of them men - neither are the behaviours of those who come into contact with the young woman. The saintly Michaela and Don José’s off stage mother, behaving more in line with patriarchal expectations, are hardly more realistic modern female role models.

Whether this tells us anything much about Carmen or whether it speaks of the society that imposes certain expectations of behaviour upon women and enforces the suppression of true feelings is something that can be swayed one way or the other depending on the intentions of the director. Brooke's La tragédie de Carmen allows for more scope for a director to explore such questions, but to see it purely in those terms can make the opera more of a commentary on society and risks missing the heart of Carmen, the one that is vividly described in Bizet's music: the joy of living and snatching each moment; living 'dangerously' as a 'oiseau rebelle'; the human story and indeed the tragedy of the human story.

Considering the limited options open to an independent and sexually liberated young woman from a minority (gypsy) background, Carmen's flirtations and loves can only end one way. In a typical traditional drama anyway. But that doesn't necessarily have to be the case, or at least it doesn't need to play out that way in a modern production. With a terrific central performance from the versatile and brilliant Sarah Richmond, Tom Deazley's direction manages to capture the wild sensuous swagger of Bizet, the dramatic tragedy of Mérimée, the character and social insights of Brooke, and brings another facet out of it all, which is indeed the human aspect of being caught up in it all.

As far as the traditional story of Bizet's opera goes, this version remains very familiar, but it's definitely noticeable that it is much more focussed. While you might expect more dialogue and performances in an adaptation from operatic to theatrical, instead even the original spoken dialogue parts of the original opera have been reduced to the absolute minimum and only to introduce a scene. Side stories and minor characters are largely removed, the role of Michaela significantly reduced but given tighter focus without losing her arias. More importantly, she comes across as a regular person, not the saintly figure that can often be presented as a counterpoint to Carmen.

Carmen’s problems can also be boiled down essentially not to her wild nature as much as her problems with men. There is no question she lives in a man’s world, but she refuses to bend to their desires, or in as much as she is able to. You don't have to look too far past regular current news reports to see that domestic violence against women and murders of young women still persists in society, so it's not as if the opera is taking either a traditionalist or a revisionist view. Again however, this 'issue' is acknowledged in the production without making it the focus and getting preachy about something that an opera is not going to change.

So much so that Deazley uses the idea of playing with fate as a means of showing where this is all going to lead. Carmen the gypsy deals out cards and is dealt with a hand herself she does not have the power to change. You can only gamble with fate so much before the tables turn on you. This is the tragedy of Carmen. There is a choice to be made in how that fate is depicted however, and the director admirably chooses not to serve up the violent ending that the traditional Carmen imposes, running the risk that it looks like she gets what she deserves for fooling around with the wrong men. The men in La tragédie de Carmen all pay a high price for their violent and abusive nature, including Carmen's jailbird husband appearing in this version as an additional character (and not surviving long!), so Carmen's only tragedy is that she gets mixed up with all these brutes. Deazley then leaves her fate open at the conclusion, certainly facing danger and death but not delivering the expected fatal blow. We all know how such situations are likely to end without having to see it enacted.

For a smaller scale production at the Jerome Hynes studio theatre in the National Opera House at Wexford, the production values are superb. Lisa Krügel provides an excellent all-purpose Blood Wedding style set with a classic Spanish adobe wall and an orange tree, without playing to kitsch depiction of an idealised postcard image of Spain. There is even room here to open that up to a village square with a bar. Subtle changes of lighting effectively set mood, scene and establish time as characters walk off and on again. The singing performances all contributed to the success of this interpretation. The versatile mezzo-soprano Sarah Richmond, familiar to those of us who have seen her in productions with the Belfast Ensemble and NI Opera as well as most recently in Jennifer Walshe's extraordinary MARS, gives exactly the strong charismatic performance that the opera needs while still retaining a degree of human vulnerability. Dafydd Allen's tenor had a steely menace, with excellent enunciation of the French libretto. It was a brave decision to perform this in French without surtitles and only a few words of English language dialogue, but familiarity with the story and very clear visual storytelling points put everything across. Roisín Walsh was an excellent Michaela and Philip Kalmanovitch played the role of the bullfighter Escamillo authoritatively.

Under the musical direction of Rebecca Warren and Nate Ben-Horin, with Warren playing a piano reduction of the score, the pacing seemed slower than you would expect for Carmen. Since the chouses have been removed and the opera has been stripped of its swagger in this version as La tragédie de Carmen, the more gentle touch of the piano reduction suited the refreshingly sensitive tone of the production. Carmen may need revisited now and again only rarely, but as long as there are sympathetic teams in place like this one at Wexford, it can still prove to be dramatically, musically and emotionally revealing.

External links: Wexford Festival Opera

Verdi - Le trouvère (Wexford, 2025)

Giuseppe Verdi - Le trouvère

Wexford Festival Opera, 2025

Marcus Bosch, Ben Barnes, Eduardo Niave, Lydia Grindatto, Giorgi Lomiseli, Kseniia Nikolaieva, Luca Gallo, Conor Prendiville, Jade Phoenix, Philip Kalmanovitch, Vladimir Sima, Conor Cooper

O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 21st October 2025

No-one would consider Il trovatore a rarely performed opera, but the French version that Verdi reworked for the Paris Opera definitely qualifies for Wexford Festival Opera's focus on lost and scarcely known works. Being a lost and forgotten opera is no indication of lack of quality: there are many reasons why operas fall into neglect. It's a fate suffered even by many worthwhile Verdi operas and Verdi's French operas are always fascinating and all too rarely seen. That's definitely the case with Le trouvère, and Marcus Bosch's production for the festival managed to breathe a little bit of new life and meaning into a work that in its more popular Italian form has become quite stale.

In whichever version you present it however, Il trovatore is always going to be a problematic opera or at least a challenge. Aside from the overheated plot, the music has been overplayed over the years and there is a danger of it losing its impact through familiarity, or perhaps not losing its impact - since those famous arias and choruses still resound powerfully - but allowed to become too 'operatic' and detached from real human stories. Le trouvère, at the very least, provides an opportunity to hear the opera afresh, and indeed the Wexford production - for their 2025 Myths and Legends themed programme - managed to delve deeper beneath the surface storytelling and find some extra character in the work.

In comparison to some of the operas that Verdi rewrote or adapted for the Paris Opera, Le trouvère remains very much the familiar Il trovatore. With a few exceptions of course, not least the fact that the libretto was rewritten in French with suitable minor changes of music for the flow of the language, but perhaps the biggest revision or concession is of course the addition of a new 30-minute ballet sequence at the start of the third Act. In terms of musical character and plot melodrama however, Le trouvère is essentially the same as the Italian version. If you want to draw a distinction of differences between the two, there's not much new here to go on - unless you are Robert Wilson of course (but there was only one of those) - but the ballet sequence alone gives more scope to develop and establish a different character for the opera.

Director Ben Barnes rightly recognises that the medieval historical setting is hardly relevant to that, so much so that even though bringing it closer to our own time in this production to the period of the Spanish Civil War, it still has no significant impact or additional relevance, and in itself doesn't lend the opera any greater depth. Not that Le trouvère or Il trovatore needs it. It's a full-blooded melodrama, a Verdi blood and thunder melodrama, and all the impact is there in the dramatic writing, the tortured souls, the overwrought plot of hidden switched identities and fateful mistakes that take a shocking turn of events. Legends and stories should be on this kind of grand scale, but they can and should still retain the essence of humanity in them. It's there in Verdi, to some extent, and it helps if a director can find a way to bring that out.

The war context of each of the scenes is effectively stage, the images and impact of war on the people is evident, the Spanish setting well defined, but in terms of direction of the singers, it was rather stiffly choreographed and all too often would fall back on opera mannerisms. A lot of this of course is 'in-built' in the opera, which amounts to a number of set pieces and star turns for the artists. Despite the strong passionate singing it was hard to feel any real human story in the fragmented structure, the stop-starting as the drama stopped to allow the singers to take their take their aria before entering back into the real (opera) world.

As good as the singing was, there was very little sense of any real interaction or drive to the love-hate drama between them. For individual performances of those classic roles however we had fine voices in Mexican tenor Eduardo Niave as Manrique and soprano Lydia Grindatto as Leonore. Giorgi Lomiseli sounded a little hesitant initially as Le Comte de Luna, but very much came into the as the drama unfolded. The most exciting performance came from Kseniia Nikolaieva's Azucena. It's a role of course designed to introduce that wildcard element of danger and unpredictability, seeking to find not so much vengeance as justice, and Nikolaieva made every one of her scenes count in raising the tensions. The rising star Irish soprano Jade Phoenix, who has made a great impact here in Wexford before, was underused as Inés, but made an impression nonetheless.

There didn't appear to be much that was going to distinguish this Le trouvère from the many other productions of Il trovatore seen through the ages, but it was at the start of the third act, when the inserted ballet music written by Verdi came into play and made a little more sense of it. It was presenting as a dream/nightmare of the Count. There was nothing particularly revelatory in the use of the generic Spanish Civil War footage mostly of troops marching and people on the streets, but with three dancers and some shadow play, it effectively blended the human love story with the imagery of the wider war. What it captured was the weight of history, of long feuds between nations and mistrustful neighbours. It reminded you that Il trovatore or Le trouvère is not as excessive as you might think in its horror story or in the passions it evokes. Worse things happen in wartime, as the news reminds us every day now.

There are a number of Ukrainian refugees in Ireland at the moment (and scandalously on the very night I attended this performance, a mob of thugs was attacking a hotel of asylum seekers in Dublin) and many are finding success in Ireland as in the rest of Europe on the opera stage. That was the case with this opera Azucena, Kseniia Nikolaieva, and I would imagine her own experiences and emotions would have fed into her performance. It showed. And if the production as a whole succeeded in relating those heightened Verdi rhythms, pacing and emotional overload of the brutality and suffering of war for the audience, imagine how much more it meant to the Ukrainian contingent. Without having to make any grand gestures - in an opera that usually calls out for grand gestures - Wexford's production of Le trouvère paid tribute in its own way by doing justice to those caught up in the horror of war.

External links: Wexford Festival Opera

Donizetti - Maria Stuarda (Madrid, 2024)

Gaetano Donizetti - Maria Stuarda

Teatro Real, Madrid, 2024

José Miguel Pérez-Sierra, David McVicar, Lisette Oropesa, Aigul Akhmetshina, Ismael Jordi, Roberto Tagliavini, Andrzej Filończyk, Elissa Pfaender

ARTE Concert - 20th December 2024

For the little that they reflect reality, there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to stage a historical opera in period setting and costume… etc. I started the last two reviews of the 2025 productions of Maria Stuarda at Salzburg and Budapest with that opening line and they both proved that point - I thought anyway - exceptionally well. There is indeed no compelling reason to present this opera on the modern stage in a mid-16th century period context: not unless you are a fairly reactionary opera director like David McVicar. Sorry, Sir David McVicar. Even then, I'm not sure what historical value a director can find interesting in an operatic dramatisation of a royal dispute that took place 500 years ago. 'Wolf Hall' this is not.

But on the basis that there are many who love a period drama, one with elaborate opera costumes and sets and yet still get to the emotional heart of a work, David McVicar is your man. If you are going to present a British royal drama in a historical context to a Spanish audience however, you are going to need to provide a little more in the way of background to the rationale and plotting behind Mary, Queen of Scots being arrested, imprisoned and executed in 1587 in a dispute with Elizabeth over the claim to being the rightful Queen of England. This is covered in a brief preface to the synopsis in the programme for the audience at the Teatro Real, but for the purposes of François Roussillon's version recorded for TV and DVD, the key events of the background to Maria Stuarda are detailed in a filmed sequence during the playing of the overture.

Director David McVicar used to be a bit more adventurous in his productions, sticking closely to the original setting and not imposing some grand concept on a work, but he would often mix it up a little - and still does. Even his previous production of Maria Stuarda for the Met in 2013 was a little more stylised than this latest production for the Teatro Real in Madrid a decade later. So while the costumes are fairly authentic to the period and the principal singers are all made up to closely resemble the historical figures they are meant to represent, McVicar tries to ensure that the spectacle at least matches the grand tone of the opera: the regal grandness, that is, of the two central queens who dominate above everything else.

For the introductory scene to the court of Elizabeth then, a huge royal orb hanging over the stage against the backdrop of a carved wall is all that is needed to suggest power and influence. That and a Queen Elizabeth who takes to the stage and dominates everything else through her pronouncements, but traditionally mainly through her vocal delivery. The reliefs on the wall however are all of ears and eyes, "Lower your voice within these walls", The Earl of Leicester tells Talbot when he mentions she-whose-name-must-not-be-spoken in the presence of Elisabeth. The suggestion - a fairly obvious one of course, but worth drawing attention to all the same - is that the Queen had eyes and ears everywhere and the punishment for treason and treachery is severe. This is typical of the McVicar aesthetic, making it feel authentically period, capturing the tone and mood of the situation and making a few bold gestures to that effect.

A bold statement perhaps, but in comparison to the two other productions of Maria Stuarda this year that I have seen, the period glamour in thrall to historical period detail means it is also the least spectacular, the historical detail detracting from the focus of where the real heart of the opera lies. That's a subjective view admittedly, and others might see it differently. Within this there is still room for bold statements and the director feels no obligation to follow directions of the libretto to the letter for each scene. The prison park where Mary is held is a wide platform with a background a huge splash of blood-like red, the overhanging orb of royal authority feeling oppressive here. Red leaves fall and scatter on the ground like spots of blood, anticipating the conclusion rather early, although to what purpose at this stage isn't clear, other than pointing to the inevitability of the conclusion to this dispute.

As with those other productions, and indeed any production of this opera, much rests on the chemistry between the two queens and perhaps Leicester plays an important factor in that as well. But again direction is important, and here we have the opportunity to compare how Lisette Oropesa fares under McVicar's direction as opposed to Ulrich Rasche's at Salzburg. I don't think there is any question that the stylised pacing and supernumerary support of the Salzburg carries more of the personal inner life than the operatic soprano mannerisms Oropesa is left to deliver to the audience here in Madrid, involving a lot of eye rolling and swaying, with hands held out in supplication (I'm reminded of the same in McVicar's direction of Sondra Radvanovsky in the 2022 Met production of Cherubini's Medea.

Other arias are similarly delivered outward, each often turning away from the person they are addressing to sing to themselves, the audience and the camera. McVicar clearly doesn't want to stray too far from convention and the expectations of the Spanish audience at Teatro Real, which sadly no longer has the creative experimentation of Gérard Mortier. (Yes, perhaps a minority view that one). There is definitely something to be said however for the Salzburg production internalising emotions and still delivering powerfully but, to make a cultural generalisation, perhaps the tone adapted is one that plays to the character of the audience. There may be something about meeting the expectations of the Spanish audience, who indeed have their own monarchy and may find the execution of a Catholic Queen by the Protestant ruler historically significant, albeit 500 years ago.

I think it does a disservice to try to treat this opera 'realistically' as a period costume drama. Yes, it can be just as effective as an opera experience, McVicar's handling of mood is excellent and for all that conventionality the scenes are all fully in the character of the high operatic drama. There is clearly more depth that can be explored in the motivations of the characters however than in trying to find some accommodation between historical records, Schiller’s dramatisation and the libretto that Donizetti works from. All you get is opera and opera dramatics, when those contrasting viewpoints, not to mention the contrasting experiences and worldviews of Mary and Elisabeth as rivals - and more than just opera rivals - is a subject worth exploring in more detail, without necessarily having to find any contemporary resonance.

Lisette Oropesa pulls out the regal and human emotional stops in the preghiera impressively in the closing scenes. The Earl of Leicester you can leave aside for any significant personal role in the drama other than being a foil for the enmity that lies between the two women rivals. It's a good tenor role nonetheless and well sung here by Ismael Jordi. Aigul Akhmetshina's Elisabetta doesn't have the same vocal authority that the role and the formidable costume that comes with the position demands, but is a great presence nonetheless and sings well. Again you can make allowances for interpretation and how you want to treat the role as having a degree of vulnerability and insecurity. Personally I felt that the conducting and performance of the score under José Miguel Pérez-Sierra was also a little too smoothly 'Classical', lacking in fire or character. Sadly, in that respect, it was a match for McVicar’s direction. The Madrid audience loved it.

External links: ARTE Concert, Teatro Real

Donizetti - Maria Stuarda (Budapest, 2025)

Gaetano Donizetti - Maria Stuarda

Hungarian State Opera, 2025

Martin Rajna, Máté Szabó, Orsolya Sáfár, Gabriella Balga, Melinda Heiter, Juraj Hollý, Norbert Balázs, István Kovács

OperaVision - 16th May 2025

For the little that they reflect reality, there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to stage a historical opera in period setting and costume… etc. See my review of the 2025 Salzburg production of Maria Stuarda for the rest of this paragraph…

Since there are a couple of recent productions of this opera available to view on the various opera streaming platforms - and this is clearly a Donizetti opera that appears to be enjoying some renewed popularity at the moment - I thought I would take a look at how some other opera companies approach the work, not to see if one is better than the other (although obviously one is drawn to make comparisons and have preferences), but whether those approaches make any significant difference to how the work is viewed. None could be more extremely removed from the historical period than the Salzburg production, you would think, but the Hungarian State Opera has a go at rivalling it for eccentricity of interpretation, while still remaining true to the intent of the work.

The style of production here in Budapest is one I would describe as 'designer' opera, one that is somewhat abstract or unrelated to any specific period other than looking 'operatic'. The court of Elizabeth in the Hungarian State Opera production directed by Máté Szabó looks the way it might have if there an extravagant fashion designer with a taste for science-fiction had been sent back from the future to create costumes for the British royal court. They may have found employment also for an architect with leanings towards fascist architecture to redesign the royal palace to be a bit more practical and functional than a 16th century castle, making sure that there is an illuminated Exit sign (an ominous one for Mary Stuart in Act II) and a canteen with a drinks machine well-stocked with plastic bottles of water to keep the court hydrated. In other words, the idea is to present an image of wealth and inspire a degree of awe in the population and since an ancient medieval look might not seem quite as impressive now; a look to impress a modern audience, which you have to admit is the really who you want to impress. And impress this does.

In contrast to the recent production at the Salzburg Festival which used its design to reflect the inner reality and explore the state of mind of two women driven by political machinery and expectations of state, the intention of the Budapest design is perhaps more to reflect or present the image of power and authority that Elizabeth wishes to convey in the difficult decisions she has to make in relation to the prisoner who also believes she has a more 'legitimate' claim to the throne. It may also be an image of might and repression that the Hungarian audience would be familiar with from their own history, but what it does effectively is to remove any trappings of soft-power royal indulgence and in the process highlight how far removed from everyday reality - the reality of most ordinary people - they are.

And yet, their actions do have an impact on people's lives. Even if the modern day British royal family’s personal affairs have little impact on the people of the UK, they are still an serve a purpose as an important figurehead to remind common people of their station as subjects more than as citizens, and as such more easily bent to the will of their political masters. I can't say for sure what a production of Maria Stuarda says to a Hungarian audience, but I'm sure they also recognise in this production the personal extravagance of their leaders and the oppressive force that they have been subjected to in their history. As such, the production design strikes a good balance between abstract and reality, with the potential to have different shades of meaning for each viewer.

But of course most importantly, its intention is to look like a grand opera spectacle, because Donizetti's Maria Stuarda is indeed written as an operatic extravaganza of charged emotions and high drama and the 2025 Budapest production delivers that in spades. And not just in terms of spectacle, but also meeting the challenge of Donizetti's musical composition and the great roles he provides for the mezzo-soprano and soprano queens. Elisabetta is the first to show her colours and Gabriella Balga delivers in the great duet between Queen Elizabeth and Leicester (a fine Juraj Hollý) over the letter from Mary. It's perhaps not as subtly smouldering with jealous rage as the Kate Lindsey in the Salzburg production but that production had another angle and interpretation and there is no question that Balga brings the operatic fireworks required for the tone of the Budapest production.

Speaking of colour, having just watched two productions of Maria Stuarda back-to-back (I might do a third), I notice that despite the reputation of Donizetti and indeed this particular opera, there is no excessive coloratura in the bel canto, but rather every note sung by Elisabetta and Maria is expressive of the deep emotional charge of the situations. Seen in that context the performance of Orsolya Sáfár as Maria is just outstanding. Yes, wholly operatic, but with a passionate delivery, impressive power, with the range and ability to sustain high notes. She definitely set this Mary up as a formidable rival to Elizabeth. And, despite yourself, you look forward all the more here to the famous encounter where the claws come out. Even more so the two singers having already flexed the muscles of their impressive vocal weaponry. If these rulers were nuclear powers we would be in trouble.

Still, trouble enough for Mary Stuart. I don't care who you are, but I imagine you would still find it hard to get away with calling a queen a 'vil bastarda' to her face, so Maria Stuarda still packs an operatic punch that stands up today for shock value - not least in the manner in which it is delivered. With the Act I mic-drop delivered, Act II has to look elsewhere for its drama and spectacle and finds it in the stylish stylised sets, with Elizabeth in her silver satin armour - more for fashion design than as any indication of her nature. There are no such doubts about Mary's condition, dressed in white and suspended like a bird in a cage. There are lots of wonderful touches to the surrounding architecture in these final scenes, not least in Maria's walk to the scaffold, all in keeping with the operatic character of the royal drama.

It would be remiss not to give credit and praise to set designer Csaba Antal and costume designer Anni Füzér here, as their contribution to the whole look and feel of the extravagant production is evident and vital. The director Máté Szabó too has a clear idea of what he wants to get across in the opera and with Martin Rajna and the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra delivering a full dynamic account of the score, ensures that every scene is as charged as it can be. Primarily the success of this production and the key to the success of any production of Maria Stuarda however lies in the casting and performances of the two queens, and both here are absolutely outstanding, with good Italian diction, technical ability and sheer opera diva personality.

I'm not going to compare them with the performances in the Salzburg production. Much as some would like to see Maria Stuarda and opera as some kind of singing contest (each to their own), the real benefit of comparing productions is in seeing the individual personality that each singer brings to the role. The performances in the Budapest production are perhaps a little more traditionally operatic while the Salzburg production goes for a stylised interpretation of the roles, but the singing here is no less impressive across the board. There is plenty of fire and personality here to match the drama and visual extravagance, everything you want from this or indeed any of Donizetti's English monarchy operas.

External links: OperaVision, Hungarian State Opera