Anna Bolena

• 1. Introduction

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  Anna Bolena premiered on the 26th of December 1830, at the Teatro Carcano in Milan. Its reception has come down to us in two words: an "overwhelming success." The biographer Weinstock notes that only after that night did something change. Johann Simon Mayr, who had taught Gaetano Donizetti composition, began addressing his former pupil as Maestro. Contemporaries started ranking Donizetti beside Bellini and Rossini, as one of the three most luminous names in Italian opera.

  The work is a tragedia lirica, a tragic opera in two acts, built around the last months of an English queen. Felice Romani shaped the libretto from two earlier plays that had already told her story. Within a few years, Donizetti returned to the same stretch of English history three more times. The women at the center of those later operas earned a shared nickname among audiences. Decades after the Milan premiere, famous singers would fight to bring this particular queen back to the stage, after long stretches when she was barely heard at all.

• 2. Two Plays, One Libretto

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  Felice Romani did not invent Anna's story from nothing. He built the libretto from two existing plays: Ippolito Pindemonte's Enrico VIII ossia Anna Bolena, and Alessandro Pepoli's own Anna Bolena. Both plays had already dramatized the life of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England's King Henry VIII.

  Donizetti took that inherited material and shaped it into a tragedia lirica, a tragic opera in two acts built for high emotional stakes rather than comic turns. The subject did not end there for the composer. Anna Bolena would turn out to be only the second of four operas he wrote about the Tudor period of English history.

• 3. The Three Donizetti Queens

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  Il castello di Kenilworth had already reached the stage in 1829, a year before Anna Bolena. Two more Tudor operas followed. Maria Stuarda, named for Mary, Queen of Scots, appeared in different forms in 1834 and in 1835. Roberto Devereux followed in 1837, named for a man believed to have been a lover of Queen Elizabeth I of England.

  The leading female characters of these last three operas, Maria Stuarda, Roberto Devereux, and Anna Bolena itself, became known together by a shared title. Audiences and historians came to call them the Three Donizetti Queens. That grouping would shape how later generations chose to stage and record all three works side by side, decades after Anna Bolena's own fortunes had already started to dim.

• 4. A Slow Fade

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  London first heard Anna Bolena at the King's Theatre on the 8th of July 1831, half a year after the Milan premiere. Its first American performance followed on the 12th of November 1839, sung in French as Anne de Boulen, at the Théâtre d'Orléans in New Orleans.

  New York had to wait even longer. The opera reached the Astor Opera House on the 7th of January 1850, conducted by Max Maretzek with Apollonia Bertucca in the title role. That performance also marked the first time the work was staged in Italian anywhere in the United States. By 1850, Anna Bolena had been staged in 25 European cities. Then the trail goes cold until a single 1881 revival in Livorno.

  After that, the rise of verismo pushed Italian taste toward grittier, more contemporary subjects. Anna Bolena was performed only rarely for decades afterward, a silence that would stretch well into the next century.

• 5. The Callas Revival

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  Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu had opened its doors in 1847 with a performance of Anna Bolena. So when the theatre marked its own centennial on the 30th of December 1947, it staged the opera again. Sara Scuderi sang Anna that night, alongside Giulietta Simionato as Jane Seymour and Cesare Siepi as Henry VIII.

  Ten years later, in April 1957, Anna Bolena returned to La Scala for Maria Callas, in a lavish production directed by Luchino Visconti. Simionato again sang Jane Seymour. One of the seven performances from that run was recorded, and the run became one of Callas's greatest triumphs.

  The following year, Callas and Simionato repeated their roles, this time joined by Siepi as the king. Siepi was taking over a part that Nicola Rossi-Lemeni had sung at the 1957 premiere. Across the Atlantic, a different kind of comeback was about to begin.

• 6. Modern Stages

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  The United States had not heard Anna Bolena since 1850 until the American Opera Society staged a concert version in October 1957. Gloria Davy sang the title role, with Simionato again as Giovanna Seymour, in performances at both Town Hall and Carnegie Hall.

  On the 26th of June 1959, the Santa Fe Opera mounted the first fully staged American production of the work since 1839. A run of celebrated sopranos then took up the role across the following decades: Leyla Gencer, Montserrat Caballé, Marisa Galvany, Renata Scotto, Edita Gruberova, and Mariella Devia among them.

  In the 1970s, Beverly Sills built a reputation partly on this opera, appearing in all three of Donizetti's Tudor works at the New York City Opera. She also made studio recordings of all three. Dame Joan Sutherland chose Anna as one of the last new roles of her career, singing it at San Francisco Opera in 1984.

  Anna Bolena still is not part of the standard repertory, but the twenty-first century has brought it back more often. The Dallas Opera staged it in November 2010, having already presented Maria Stuarda. The Minnesota Opera folded it into a full "Three Queens" trilogy. In the spring of 2011, the Vienna State Opera cast Anna Netrebko in the title role, with Elīna Garanča as Giovanna Seymour.

  New York's Metropolitan Opera staged Anna Bolena for the first time in September 2011, opening its 2011-2012 season with Netrebko and director David McVicar. The following year, Opera Seria UK in Manchester opened its own "Tudor Queens" trilogy with the opera, continuing the cycle into 2014. Welsh National Opera toured its version of the trilogy across Britain between September and November 2013. The Lyric Opera of Chicago included Anna Bolena in its 2014-2015 season, and Sondra Radvanovsky has since sung the title role at several houses, including the Met in 2015. Nearly two centuries after its premiere, most of those audiences still arrive not knowing how the queen's downfall actually plays out on stage.

• 7. Inside the Plot

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  The action unfolds in 1536, moving between Windsor and London. Giuditta Pasta created the title role at the premiere, opposite Filippo Galli as Enrico, or Henry VIII. Elisa Orlandi sang Giovanna Seymour, Anna's own lady-in-waiting. Lorenzo Biondi sang Lord Rochefort, Anna's brother, and Giovanni Battista Rubini sang Riccardo Percy, the man Anna once loved. Henriette Laroche sang Smeton, a musician page, and Antonio Crippa sang the court official Hervey.

  At Windsor, courtiers sense that the queen's star is setting because the king's heart now burns for someone else. Henry tells Jane Seymour, in private, that she will soon have no rival, and that a husband, a crown and a throne await her. Riccardo Percy, recalled from exile, still loves Anna, and Henry orders his officer Hervey to spy on every word that passes between them.

  Smeaton, the page, has stolen a locket holding Anna's portrait, meaning only to return it. Hidden behind a screen, he mistakes an argument for an attack and rushes out with a sword already drawn by Percy. Henry finds them and, seeing the swords, accuses all three of betrayal. Smeaton tears open his own tunic, offering his chest to prove his innocence. But the locket falls at the king's feet, and Henry has the group dragged to the dungeons.

  In the second act, Jane urges Anna to admit guilt and save her own life. Anna refuses, saying she will not buy survival with disgrace, and insists that Henry alone is guilty. A council of peers dissolves the royal marriage and condemns Anna, Percy, Rochefort and Smeaton to death. Percy and Rochefort, briefly pardoned, choose execution anyway rather than leave Anna to die alone.

  In her cell, Anna's mind gives way. She imagines it is her wedding day, then imagines Percy is beside her, and asks him to take her back to her childhood home. Donizetti set that plea to the melody of the song Home Sweet Home. Cannon fire announces Henry and Jane's own wedding celebrations outside. Anna says she wants no revenge on them, faints, and is led with the others toward the block.

• 8. Voices on Record

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  Maria Callas recorded the role live at La Scala on the 14th of April 1957, conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni, with Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, Giulietta Simionato and Gianni Raimondi. EMI later released it on CD, catalogue number CDMB 5 66474-2.

  Leyla Gencer took up the role for a 1958 broadcast recording with the same conductor and the Orchestra Sinfonica e Coro della RAI di Milano, later issued by Andromeda. Gencer returned to it again in 1965, recorded live at the Glyndebourne Festival on the 13th of June, released by Hunt with Carlo Cava, Patricia Johnson and Juan Oncina.

  Other studio and live recordings followed across the decades: Teresa Żylis-Gara in Cologne under Alberto Erede in 1967; Elena Souliotis, Nicolai Ghiaurov and Marilyn Horne for Decca under Silvio Varviso with the Vienna State Opera in 1968-69; Beverly Sills, Paul Plishka and Shirley Verrett under Julius Rudel with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1972; and Renata Scotto, recorded live in Philadelphia on the 16th of December 1975.

  Joan Sutherland committed the role to film twice, first on a 1984 VAI DVD with the Canadian Opera Company, then for Decca in 1987 with the Welsh National Opera, alongside Samuel Ramey and Susanne Mentzer. Edita Gruberova recorded it in 1994 for Nightingale Classics with Hungarian Radio's chorus and orchestra. Dimitra Theodossiou's performance was filmed at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo in October 2006, released on DVD by Dynamic.

  Anna Netrebko recorded the role twice within months of each other in 2011: once on DVD from the Vienna State Opera under Evelino Pidò, with Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Elīna Garanča and Francesco Meli, and again live at the Metropolitan Opera under Marco Armiliato, in David McVicar's staging, streamed on Met Opera on Demand. The 2016 recording pairs Sondra Radvanovsky with Ildar Abdrazakov, Milijana Nikolic and Stephen Costello, again under Armiliato, but this time only as streaming audio rather than a filmed release, the newest format yet in a chain of recordings stretching back to Callas's tape from 1957.