Roberto Devereux on the Sensual Stage

by Michael Nicolella

 

Roberto Devereux
Music by Gaetano Donizetti
Edited by Mario Parenti
Libretto by Salvadore Cammarano
New York City Opera Production Fall 2000

The Elizabethan era remains the apogee of the English monarchy, which soon after succumbed to religious strife, a rising mercantile class and civil war, from all of which it never regained its prior power. The only of the three daughters of Henry VIII to die peacefully in old age, the Maiden Queen held England together by cult of celebrity during a time when all institutions were in question.

It helped little that her father had founded the Anglican Church on the blood of Sir Thomas More - the Catholic Bishop who refused Henry his divorces and was hacked to pieces by drunken knights in Westminster Abbey (the chipped steps still are venerated) - then declared himself head of the English Church and spiritual protector of the English people, all for the love of a son who never came. Incidentally, his armor, with a barrel chest and a codpiece that is the size of a man’s head and likely bulletproof, is on display in the Tower of London.

It also didn’t help that Catholic Spain was offering new challenges to young Elizabeth, including a tender of marriage by Phillip II, whom she coldly rebuked, saying, "I will have only one mistress here, and no master." On the night early in her reign when she rallied her troops on the banks of the Thames as Spanish Galleons massed in the English Channel, historical record suggests that "she bepissed herself with fear." Still, her men loved her, the Armada foundered in a gale, and the Elizabethan Age was born.

She had no easy task. London still suffered from outbursts of the Plague, the Irish were being truculent, agriculture was in upheaval and certain Lords thought that they had better ideas for England. The Court and the Parliament exhorted Elizabeth to take English trade to sea, which ensured confrontation once more with the powerful Spanish Navy. She employed pirates to harass the Spanish ships. Among these privateers was Sir Walter Raleigh, who ended up imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he wrote his encyclopedia during the interminable wait before his head was taken off. She had a way of doing that to people. If Elizabeth were to marry, she would marry her countrymen, and so be mother to every household in the land (thereby keeping every powerful man in her domain playing the dashing suitor in hopes of using her to his own advantage).

"English Operas" were much in fashion in Italy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Italian delight in ritual and adornment finds full expression in Elizabeth’s court, with its belief in Ptolemy’s ideal of heavenly bodies circling a golden sun. Her defiance was the scandal of Catholic Europe. Roberto Devereux, one of Donizetti’s mature works, written in 1837, was in the active repertory for more than twenty years after Donizetti’s death.

It tells the story of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, as he returns from Ireland accused of treason after being exiled to fight an Irish rebellion. Elizabeth longs to see the ring she gave him for protection from his enemies. She does not know that he has given it to his love, Sara, who during his exile was orphaned, and then married by the Queen to the Duke of Nottingham. As the tale is sung, enemies in Parliament conspire to have Essex killed. His sole defender is Nottingham, a longtime friend, who reasons with the Lords and pleads his friend’s case before the Sovereign.

The historical figures of Roberto Devereux are real in the most basic sense, though even their ages are incorrect, the love triangle is a fabrication, and Devereux never vanquished the Irish, instead negotiating an unauthorized treaty that earned him his fate. Historically, Elizabeth declared to the Court that she should "teach him some manners." He was a young man in Elizabeth’s court, and she was near the end of her reign, in her sixties.

History suggests that Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, was Elizabeth’s lover and confidant, though this is mostly educated speculation. It is the task of this opera to persuade one that Elizabeth’s lonely time on the throne was salved by her love of Devereux, a handsome, chivalrous sort who was utterly unable to choose, due to his circumstance and through faults of his own. Italian opera generally is short on fact, in pursuit of truth, so it is said. Devereux’s crime is scarcely described - he asks why is he is being persecuted: for being too merciful to the vanquished? In truth, his crime was a greater one than that.

The City Opera’s stage set is appropriately garish and unsettling. A modern theater marquee with electric lights proclaims "Elizabeth Rei" with the young queen's portrait - line-drawn - as Englishmen were expected to carry in their lockets. Similar, larger-than-human silhouettes peer from corners in succession; the floor is lighted where she steps. One chorus, the Lords of Parliament, wanders in a band about the stage, denouncing Devereux. A flock of black-clad women exhort Sara to stop pining and weeping for her lost beau.

Fernando De La Mora as Devereux is the sort of big-hearted, slightly confused man for whom every action begs for embellishment, who is the keystone of Italian patriotism. Think Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona, with its sophisticated comic intrigue of rivalries between the sexes, were Sir Edward Devere, né Shakespeare, not terrified of Queen Elizabeth; or… ad infinitum.

Lauren Flanigan as Elizabeth appears in regal accoutrements, face whitened and dressed in pearls, lace, cuffs and collars, remarkably poised as she glides about the stage amid her soprano elegies and castigations. She verges on shrill when she sings of fabled love to Devereux’s pleas and Sara’s weeping. The performers this night only sometimes achieved the most sure dramatic tension as they sang; still, the production values were high, the performances sweet to my journeyman ear, the rituals of the human soul alive upon the stage.

About the Author:

Michael Nicolella is a frequent contributor to the Newsletter. He also serves as assistant editor for the for the Newsletter's Breaking News and schedule listings.

Resources:

The performance reviewed here took place on 16 October 2000 at the New York City Opera, Lincoln Center, New York.

Roberto Devereux was composed in 1837 by Gaetano Donizetti who lived from 1797 to 1848.