maria stuarda

Maria Stuarda (Mary Stuart) is a tragic opera, tragedia lirica, in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti to a libretto by Giuseppe Bardari based on Friedrich von Schiller’s 1800 play MARIA STUART. It received its premiere on December 30, 1835 at La Scala and is based on the lives of Mary, Queen of Scots and her cousin Queen Elizabeth I. During the negotiations of a marriage proposal between Queen Elizabeth and the King of France, Lord Talbot, intercedes on behalf of the royal prisoner Maria Stuart, imprisoned in Fotheringay Castle since fleeing from Scotland. The Queen is torn between sympathy for Maria and fear that she is plotting against her, but her wrath comes from Leicester, the man she loves, who argues her rivals’ case with a passion that makes her feel betrayed. As the queens confront one another, each is already convinced that the other is haughty, yet the final triumph proves elusive to either one.