Seen and Heard International. Zurich Opera, Zurich, 5. In she celebrated her 50th stage appearance with a gala concert at Zurich Opera, before retiring one year later.
Anna Bolena was one of her principal roles. Not everyone thinks bel canto operas are the best thing since sliced bread. The leading composers of this genre are Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. Whilst the operas certainly showcase the voice as a beautiful instrument, they are often short of catchy tunes. So it is with Anna Bolena , where the first act, full of dramatic incident, is a mite short of melody.
Act II slows down the action hardly gripping, when everyone knows how the opera ends but the score blossoms. Anna Bolena is one of the Tudor trilogy, each with a different librettist; while Anna Bolena is historically the first , the stories are far apart chronologically β Elizabeth I is still only a small child. David Alden directed the Maria Stuarda in Zurich a few years ago review click here and retains the same set design, a light grey back wall onto which he can project video images, skulls, castles, woodland, as appropriate.
In front of that, he lowers wood panelling to depict the interior of a royal palace, with a roaring log fire. Costumes are a hotchpotch β historically correct and luxurious for the royals, British clothing from the s and s for the ladies-in-waiting and Courtiers, complete with dark suits and bowler hats and, for some of the ladies, beehive hairdos. Alden introduces humour into the otherwise grim plot by throwing in some stereotypical ideas, umbrellas to accentuate the typical British weather, and the lawn in the archery scene is shown being meticulously clipped.
Current bel canto diva Diana Damrau sings the role of Anna for the first time; it took her quite a while to warm up, and some of the top notes were too much of a squall.
