Mary Stuart, Opera North

Saga of Tudors and Stuarts winningly given the bel canto treatment

by Graham RicksonSaturday, 05 June 2010

The encounter that never happened: Sarah Connolly as Mary Stuart and Antonia Cifrone as ElizabethBill Cooper

Among the many pleasures of Donizetti's Mary Stuart is the fun of watching a chunk of primary-school history filtered through a florid bel canto imagination. There are moments when you want to cry out, “That’s not what happened!” But it’s so fast-moving, so well-paced, that you soon stop complaining and just surrender.

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