Maria Stuarda, Royal Opera House

Joyce DiDonato has one of the most sumptuous mezzo-soprano voices in the whole of opera, and her casting in the title role of the Royal Opera House’s new production of Donizetti’s opera Maria Stuarda, about Mary Queen of Scots, has had opera-lovers fluttering with anticipation. 

American DiDonato specialises in the repertoire of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, which suits her expressively liquid delivery and ability to control tone and articulation even in the fastest passages of music. Donizetti is well known as master of bel canto writing, an approach emphasising smoothness of tone and vocal agility. Out of fashion for some time, and associated with the most melodramatic and absurd types of operatic performance, bel canto singing is now admired for its technical skill, and, in the right hands, emotional potency. 

Maria Stuarda lay unperformed for over a century, having offended the authorities on its first outing, and only gradually recovered its place in the repertoire. Along with Donizetti’s other two Tudor operas, it has very recently become a fixture in opera houses around the world, with new productions at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and Welsh National Opera. The combination of DiDonato’s gilded vocal power and Donizetti’s dizzying technical demands make this one of the stand-out productions of the season.