Mary, Queen of Scots, ENO, review: Thea Musgrave's opera returns to London sounding grander than ever

Telegraph

16-02-2025

Back in the 1970s, before neglect of women composers was recognised as an urgent issue (with resultant automatic entry to the Radio 3 playlist), there was at least one fine composer who bucked the trend. The Scots composer Thea Musgrave was active, often commissioned, and played regularly in Scotland and at the Proms; her orchestral works, including concertos with a rebellious solo clarinet and horns placed all around the concert hall, had an innovative, strongly theatrical element. Then in 1977 came her full-scale opera Mary, Queen of Scots, given by Scottish Opera, which they brought to London for a couple of performances at Sadler's Wells in 1980.
English National Opera was thus wrong to claim this staging as a London premiere, but it was the first time one of the London companies had taken up the work, while Musgrave has lived in America for over 50 years. This is a grand opera in the Verdian tradition, boldly drawn and essentially traditional in its structure, even to incorporating dance episodes and on-stage music, but written in a compelling mid-20th-century idiom which allows the text (Musgrave's own, based on a play by Amalia Elguera) to communicate.
The opera throws Mary's return from France to Scotland into the ferment of conflicting religious factions between her half-brother James, who starts as her protector but ends as her usurper, and Darnley, the playboy English aristocrat to whom she is unwisely attracted and marries.
In the title role, Heidi Stober, whom we last saw in London as a gangly Gretel at the Royal Opera, is stunningly confident with a terrifying top range when she is, as so often, angry and frustrated. Rupert Charlesworth's dandy-like Darnley matches her well, and Alex Otterburn is more sober but less charismatic as the wily James. Also key to the well-sculpted plot are Barnaby Rea as Riccio, murdered by his friend Darnley, and John Findon as a fine, burly Earl of Bothwell, who is another turncoat, coming to defend Mary but then abusing her.
The key figure in advising Mary to cut her losses and flee, after the baying crowd blame her for Riccio's murder, is Lord Gordon, a stentorian, crystal-clear Alastair Miles, who packs all his considerable Verdian experience into the role. What was originally billed as a concert performance turned into Stewart Laing's effectively stripped-down, loosely contemporary staging, by an outdoor tent with copious anoraks shielding the Scottish cold.
Joana Carneiro conducted the complex but transparent score with unremitting vigour, and the still active 96-year old composer was present for a heartfelt standing ovation.