Queens’ night at the opera

SAN DIEGO -- We do with Henry VIII -- along with his wives, kids, cousins and long line of heirs -- as we please. In theater, opera, film and television, the monarchs are historical playthings we never tire of refashioning in our guise.

Katharine Hepburn was once a Mary Stuart stalwart, like John Wayne in a John Ford western. Cate Blanchett hopes a post-feminist Elizabeth I will win her a second Oscar on Sunday. Elizabeth II did it for Helen Mirren a year ago. Showtime’s Tudors appear transported from West Hollywood to merry old England. Next week, Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson will show up at the movies as the Boleyn sisters, Anne and Mary, in “The Other Boleyn Girl.”

Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda” -- which San Diego Opera is presenting in its original Italian but calling “Mary, Queen of Scots” -- is authentic to nothing. The libretto is based on Friedrich Schiller’s 1800 play, “Maria Stuart,” which invents a meeting of Elizabeth and Mary. But the opera was as untrue to Schiller as to history. Donizetti cared little for nuanced political or religious context of the two queens’ rivalry.

He kept things simple: Elizabeth loves the Earl of Leicester, who loves Mary. Imprisoned by Elizabeth, the Scottish queen must, of course, lose her head. Italian opera of the 19th century had its own conventions and dramatic needs.

Still, there is power in this opera. Donizetti’s royal operas, which also include “Anna Bolena” and “Roberto Devereux,” come in and out of fashion depending on who is around to sing them. In the ‘50s, Maria Callas was an astonishing Anna, all passion all the time. In the ‘70s, Joan Sutherland, Beverly Sills and Montserrat Caballe brought “Stuarda” back to the repertory after more than a century of neglect.

Now, “Maria Stuarda” appears to be making a second comeback. Last month, Italy’s most important house, La Scala in Milan, presented a new production of the opera. A recent recording by Natalie Dessay, who’s been wowing them at the Metropolitan Opera in Donizetti’s never-out-of-favor “Lucia di Lammermoor,” includes Mary’s first aria. And San Diego has mounted “Stuarda” for Angela Gilbert, a South African soprano who was a hit in the company’s “Lucia” last season.

A victim of the dress-rehearsal bug, which has been going around Southern California, Gilbert was forced by flu to cancel on opening night, Saturday, for which an Albanian Ermonela Jaho was quickly found. Tuesday night, though, Gilbert appeared at Civic Theatre.

Sills’ ghost was on hand as well. The sets were created for her by Ming Cho Lee nearly four decades ago at New York City Opera. They once framed a great singer, but that was it. They are now historic relics, and not in the best sense of the term.

Gilbert has the vocal goods for “Stuarda,” but any resemblance to Sills ends there. Mary doesn’t appear until the second act. She has spent many long years in prison. Allowed some fresh air, she hymns nature. Gilbert was unsteady and mannered. She has a strange habit of studiously preparing herself to take breaths. She floats a fine pianissimo, but you know it’s coming. Her robotic arm motions come as an afterthought.

She got better as the evening progressed. She was stubbornly defiant in her confrontation with Elizabeth, and by the time she was ready for her executioner, she was grounded and soaring.

Still, Kate Aldrich’s Elizabeth dominated the evening vocally and dramatically. She got the best clothes. And the riding crop with which to taunt Mary. In 2004, the young American mezzo-soprano appeared with Los Angeles Opera in Mozart’s “Idomeneo” and made a favorable impression but didn’t stand out.

Now she stands out. As Sills had done decades earlier, Aldrich made the drab sets seem to vanish. Her tone is creamy with a bright top. She reacts to the moment. Her coloratura fireworks light up the sky.

Donizetti didn’t care much for the men in this opera, and neither did Ingeborg Bernerth, whose costumes from Dallas Opera were used. Yeghishe Manucharyan’s Leicester was not strong, but the thin-voiced tenor didn’t have a chance with either queen in his hand-me-down white stockings and white booties. Reinhard Hagen was a forceful Talbot, and Andrew Greenan’s scheming Cecil was always the loudest person in the room.

Edoardo Muller conducted sympathetically, supporting his singers, sometimes to a fault. The orchestra was very good, the chorus blunt. Andrew Sinclair was the director, which appeared an unimportant job in this production.

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‘Mary, Queen of Scots’

Where: San Diego Opera at Civic Theatre, 1100 3rd Ave., San Diego

When: 8 p.m. Friday; 2 p.m. Sunday

Price: $28 to $175

Contact: (619) 533-7000 or

www.sdopera.com