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Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Opera

Roberto Devereux

, , , , April 2026

Roberto Devereux

The opera

Opera Season 2026

Composer
Gaetano Donizetti

Conductor and director

Characters and cast

Orchestra and chorus

  • Orchestra Orchestra
  • Chorus Coro
  • Chorus master Giovanni Farina

Creative team

Sets
Monica Manganelli
Costumes
Gianluca Falaschi
Lighting
Paolo Liaci
Staging revived by
Luisa Baldinetti
Associate costume designer
Gian Maria Sposito

Details

Production
A staging of Fondazione Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa
Information

Based on the tragedy Elisabeth d’Angleterre by Jacques-François Ancelot.
The title belongs to the ambitious and ill-fated Earl of Essex, but the protagonist, clearly, is her: Elizabeth I Tudor, the Virgin Queen, daughter of «the terrible Henry the Eighth». More than that, the protagonist is the solitude of power, absolute on earth and disarmed before the passing of time and before feelings that can only be condemned to unhappiness, never extinguished. Like a single continuous take, Donizetti’s musical framing knows no cuts and focuses ever more closely on Elizabeth’s drama. The first act presents the four main characters and their relations (Elizabeth loves Robert, who loves Sara and is loved in return but keeps an ambiguous complaisance towards the queen; Nottingham is married to Sara and is Robert’s best friend); in the second, events rush on (Elizabeth discovers that Robert loves another, Nottingham discovers that the other is his wife); the last act is the epilogue of solitudes adrift, with the desperate reckoning between husband and wife, Robert’s farewell to life and Elizabeth’s great scene, ready to pardon but too late, exhausted and raving.

In Donizetti’s day the affairs of English royalty were all the rage in opera houses. Gossip about crowned heads and evocative settings: a combination that still works today. What makes the difference between a consumer product and a work of art, in Roberto Devereux, is Donizetti’s ability to go further and show all the theatrical power and depth of bel canto.
Musical director and conductor

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