Beverly Sills - Donizetti: MARIA STUARDA, Full entrance scene, Rare Los Angeles performance, 1972

THE MUSIC: "Maria Stuarda" is the third of Donizetti's operas on English Tudor royalty. Based on Schiller's play from 1800, "Maria Stuarda" had a rocky birth due to troubles with censors, singer rivalries, and illnesses in the cast. After its dress rehearsal in Naples in 1834 caused concern with censors, a rewrite was required with new characters and plot structure under the title of "Buondelmonte." It underwent more revisions and premiered, in the form we mostly know it as now, at La Scala at the end of 1835. It never caught on in Donizetti's era and went dormant until the 1960s when the work started to be re-evaluated. It was mounted for Leyla Gencer in Florence in 1967, for Joan Sutherland in San Francisco in 1971, for Beverly Sills in New York in 1972, and for Janet Baker in 1973. It is produced fairly regularly now (117 productions world-wide since 2004) I wager because the story of the great rival queens has entered the cultural consciousness with two star-studded prestigious films (1971 and 2018) and prominent theater productions of Schiller's play, plus the publication of a critical edition of the score in the late 1980s. Maria Stuarda has a long entrance scene with an introduction and a beautiful and then dramatic two-part aria, sung here in the NYCO production on tour in Los Angeles in November of 1972.

THE SONGBIRD: Beverly Sills (1929 - 2007) was my first diva and the reason I became infatuated with coloratura sopranos and started collecting vocal music. Sills holds a special place in my musical life to this day so I'm happy to share this rare item that is not currently posted on YouTube. Sills first sang Maria Stuarda at the New York City Opera on March 7, 1972 and performed the opera with NYCO 18 times (three on tour in Los Angeles). Her last performance of it was on September 11, 1974.

Видео Beverly Sills - Donizetti: MARIA STUARDA, Full entrance scene, Rare Los Angeles performance, 1972 канала songbirdwatcher