Mary, Queen of Scots (opera)
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| Mary, Queen of Scots | |
|---|---|
| Opera by Thea Musgrave | |
 Mary, Queen of Scots, the opera's protagonist | |
| Librettist | Thea Musgrave |
| Language | English |
| Premiere | |
Mary, Queen of Scots is an opera in three acts composed by Thea Musgrave. Musgrave also wrote the libretto based on Peruvian writer Amalia Elguera's play Moray. It focuses on events in the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, from her return to Scotland in 1561 until 1568 when she was forced to flee to England. The opera premiered on 6 September 1977 at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh performed by Scottish Opera. It has subsequently had multiple performances in the UK, US, and Germany.[1] A chamber version, produced by Musgrave in 2016, also exists.
Mary, Queen of Scots was the first of four operas on historical figures which Musgrave has composed. The others are Harriet, the Woman Called Moses (1985), Simón Bolívar (1995), and Pontalba (2003). It was also the first for which she wrote her own libretto, a practice which she continued with all her later operas. Musgrave's starting point for the libretto was Moray, an unpublished play by Amalia Elguera who had written the libretto for Musgrave's 1973 opera The Voice of Ariadne. According to Musgrave, she was re-writing the libretto right up to the time she finished composing the music. The opera's primary focus is on Mary's troubled relationships with her half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray; her husband Lord Darnley; and her seducer the Earl of Bothwell. These relationships are foreshadowed in her Act 1 aria "The Three Stars of my Firmament". The libretto takes some liberties with the actual historical facts. The character Lord Gordon is fictitious although partly based on Lord Huntly. The real Earl of Moray was murdered two years later than depicted in the opera. Another character in the opera, Cardinal Beaton, was already dead before the opera's action begins in 1561.[2][3][4][5]
Performance history
A commission from Scottish Opera, Mary, Queen of Scots was given its world premiere by the company at the Edinburgh Festival on 6 September 1977. The premiere production was directed by Colin Graham and conducted by Musgrave herself. Over the next two and a half years Scottish Opera took their production on tour to multiple UK cities and gave one performance in Germany at the Staatsoper Stuttgart in May 1978. The US premiere was performed by Virginia Opera on 29 March 1978 in a new production directed by David Farrar and conducted by Peter Mark. Mark was also the conductor at the opera's New York premiere in 1981 when it was performed by New York City Opera.[3][6][2][7]
Other significant later performances have included its first performance in German in a new production at the Städtische Bühnen Oper in Bielefeld (1984) and performances conducted by Musgrave at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco performed by San Francisco Spring Opera (1979). Mary's arias also appear in Musgrave's 40-minute triptych, Three Women: Queen, Mistress, Slave, a narrated assemblage of scenes for the leading female characters from Mary, Queen of Scots and Musgrave's later operas, Simon Bolivar, and Harriet, the Woman Called Moses. The triptych had its world premiere in January 1999 at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco with Amy Johnson singing all three heroines.[8][9][10]
A live recording of Virginia Opera's performance of the US premiere with Ashley Putnam in the title role was released on CD by Novello Records in 1989.[11] The opera made its ENO premiere in London on 15 February 2025, in a co-production with San Francisco Opera.[12]
