Mariella Devia

Live from La Scala Wednesday 13 May 1992

From the Rai Auditorium in Turin, a concert featuring music by Gioachino Rossini. Conductor Tiziano Severini, choir director Bruno Casoni, soprano Mariella Devia, contralto Bernadette Manca Di Nissa, tenor Rockwell Blake, baritone Roberto Servile. Rai Turin Symphony Orchestra.

Two queens on one island. A recipe for disaster. Especially as both have a legitimate claim to the other's throne. They are, after all, related... So the power politics are the name of the game. And, for reasons of state, one of the heads that wears a crown has to roll. Maria Stuarda was laid to rest for more than a hundred years, finally being revived in 1958 in Bergamo under conductor Oliviero de Fabritiis. However the real breakthrough for the opera finally came with Giorgio de Lullo's Florentine production for the Maggio Musicale in 1967 (with set design and costumes by Pier Luigi Pizzi, director, set designer and costume designer at La Scala in 2008). As the two queens, Leyla Gencer and Shirley Verrett, set the vocal standards. Since then, the triumph of Maria Stuarda has been unstoppable.

Gaetano Donizetti's comedic opera about a woman in Napoleon's army is performed here in French by the Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro alla Scalla.

Mariella Devia, one of the greatest bel canto singers of 20th century, chooses Venice’s La Fenice as the stage for her last Norma.

In the last and most dramatic aria in Roberto Devereux , one of the four Tudor period operas composed by Donizetti in 1837 (along with Anna Bolena , Maria Stuarda and Il Castello di Kenilworth), the protagonist, Queen Elizabeth I of England, exclaims: "I do not reign, I do not live". This statement encapsulates great operatic themes, and it is the culmination of an opera that reveals the passions of characters who live among palace intrigues. Written in the mature period of the leader of Italian romanticism, the opera displays a great vocal virtuosity, and is an example of Donizetti prizing the voice above all in the genre. The staging, by South African director Alessandro Talevi, who has been very successful in great opera houses as well as with more experimental theatre, places the play in an undetermined period, focusing on the chiaroscuro. Bruno Campanella conducts.

Rare production of the opera which immediately preceded Lucia di Lammermoor in Donizetti’s oeuvre. This performance was taped live at the Teatro Regio di Parma, January 5, 2002.