I must confess to something. Until last June, I had never seen an opera. I don’t think I know more than one person my age who has. So, upon entering the Gaiety last month donned in my best blazer (bird-patterned), I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had vague notions of inaccurate period costumes and airs of superiority, rich old people in suits and a conservative storyline. Instead, I was thrilled to find that the Irish National Opera’s performance of Maria Stuarda (1835) by Gaetano Donizetti was full of monarchist satire, dominatrix sopranos and high tragedy amid the cruel bureaucracy of office politics.
Following two years of lockdowns, the Irish National Opera is back in full force with a grand total of ten new shows taking place between now and next summer. These range from the more conventional works, such as Puccini’s Tosca and Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, to an opera by contemporary playwright Enda Walsh.One particular highlight of the programme includes a virtual reality community opera written with students from rural Ireland and communities from Inis Meáin and Tallaght.
Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda is an opera with a complicated history. Its first rehearsals resulted in physical fights between the two lead actresses, and an eventual ban by Ferdinand II, the King of Naples. The reason for this was possibly because his wife was descended from Mary Stuart. Either that or he found two women calling each other “bastard” and “prostitute” on stage too overwhelming. This 21st Century production does not generate nearly as much controversy, but toys with anti-imperial sentiments nonetheless. Tara Erraught plays the titular role of Maria, with Anna Devin as her royal rival, Elisabetta. The show’s first dialogue takes place in a press conference, featuring Devin’s Elisabetta decked out in a garish union jack dress and lurid red wig. In contrast, Erraught’s Maria is a bucolic heroine, her red hair long and more natural in colour, dressed in a flowing floral dress, directly contrasting the Anglo-Circus chic of Elisabetta. Mary Stuart’s Catholic faith made her dangerous to Elizabeth I’s position as the Protestant queen of England, and in this faux-modern production there is a clear parallel made between this religious conflict and the contentious relationship between Ireland and England. The opera opened the day after Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, making the stakes of the performance more relevant than ever.
While Erraught certainly shone, Devin’s performance stood out to me as a near-perfect balance of anxiety and irony. Members of the supporting cast included Maria’s fond yet long-suffering attendant, Anna Kennedy (played by Gemma Ní Bhriain in a superbly Sapphic get-up), and two men who I found difficult to tell apart (played by Callum Thorpe and Giorgio Caoduro). Upon reading the programme I found out they were both advisors to Elisabetta, albeit on different sides of the “kill Maria”/”don’t kill Maria” argument. My take-away was that they were hot, which I later realised was probably because they were singing bass and baritone, respectively.
The director, Tom Creed, describes the two women’s relationship with Leicester as a “full-blown love triangle in which Leicester’s infatuation with both women is a key driver of the plot”.This I must disagree with. While played outstandingly by Arthur Espiritu, Leicester comes across as a bit of a wet-wipe. A weenie. A “beta cuck”, if you will. I love to suspend my belief, but it’s hard to believe that two women as headstrong and powerful as Maria and Elisabetta would be fighting over a man with such a pervasive sense of being a “simp”. This love-triangle is based in fiction, but there seemed more chemistry between the two leading women than between them and their toy-boy inamorato.
And I do so wish they had played up this homoeroticism. A complaint I have in regards to any adaptation of the Mary/Elizabeth rivalry is that they never fully realise the erotic potential inherent in being narrative foils. There is something of the Killing Eve, enemies-to-lovers trope in this fictionalised dynamic. If we’re already altering history to concoct a meeting between these two queens who never met, why not go the full way and make them gay? We love to quote the ancient adage, “Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss”, but all too often the essential fourth component, “Gaybait” is forgotten. The Irish National Opera’s staging goes as far as to have Elizabeth in tight pleather riding pants and brandishing a whip in her meeting with Maria, so I ask: Why not allow them a tragic Judas kiss? Or at least some flirtatious eye contact.
Opera and campiness have long been aligned. While the direction only flirted with it, costuming and set wedded these aesthetics perfectly. Katie Davenport’s design was stellar, if slightly confusing. I believe the company was going for a modernised, 21st century setting, and if this was the case, it didn’t quite succeed. Instead, the performance settled in a surreal space of achronism that I found much more fascinating. Talbot sends Leicester a “portrait” of Maria from his iPhone while they croon in Italian. Maria wears a house-arrest bracelet and a flowery dress. The countryside backdrop is just a painted screen. The queen’s soldiers, dressed in what appear to be fencing one-pieces, red knee socks and fluffy bearskin caps, rip a hole through it. There is something playfully meta-theatrical about this bizarre staging. Elisabetta and her advisors deliberate over whether to execute Mary in an office setting, lending the scene a sense of Succession-esque dark humour. The fluorescent office lights and backdrop of beige blinds wash out the singers, conveying perfectly the doubt and despair of Elizabetta, who at one point clings onto the photocopier for support.
It would be remiss not to mention that there were a few questionable choices in the production. Programme editor Michael Dervan desperately attempts to evoke the ever-divisive concept of “cancel culture” in his programme essay with no real argument as to why this is relevant to the opera. The chorus protest Maria’s impending execution with “I am Mary Queen of Scots” signs, wearing what appear to be brightly coloured pyjamas with tartan elements. However, these hiccups were outweighed by the sheer pathos of the production and the immense talent of its performers. All my previous doubts about opera — that it would be dull, that it would be over-the-top, that it would be annoying to read the subtitles, — were washed away with my tears. Giddy with such spectacle, I vowed to get as many free tickets to the opera as I could. There was a photocopier on stage. I may never recover.
The Irish National Opera’s Maria Stuarda is available to watch now for free on OperaVision and YouTube, and their current season is running from now until June 2023.
