Opera Scotland

Thea Musgrave opera at ENO

Posted 16 Jan 2025

The veteran Scottish composer Thea Musgrave was born in Edinburgh in 1928 and her 97th birthday is due on 27 May.

English National Opera celebrate the event by giving the belated London premiere of one of her most highly-regarded operas, Mary, Queen of Scots.  It was cheering to see her present on opening night, sitting at the front of the stalls and able to take a bow before the crowded and enthusiastic audience.

The work was commissioned by Scottish Opera, who gave its premiere to general acclaim at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1977. They toured it in 1978, including a performance in Stuttgart.

While the famous character has appeared in a few operas, most notably Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, ending with the pathos of her execution, the plot of this version, using the composer's own libretto, is centred on the brief years she spent as Queen living in Scotland. Subsidiary characters include her husbands Darnley and Bothwell, as well as Cardinal Beaton, David Riccio and Mary's notorious half-brother, James Stewart, the Earl of Moray. The plot contains much incident, and the murder of Riccio does take place in a scrum centre-stage. Darnley's demise, by means of a large explosion, is just announced to the assembly.

ENO scheduled two performances at the London Coliseum on 15 and 18 February at 7.00pm. The conductor, a specialist in delivering new work, was Joana Carneiro, with the excellent soprano Heidi Stober in the title role and Alex Otterburn very effective as the Earl of Moray. Other soloists included Rupert Charlesworth (Darnley), John Findon (Bothwell), Barnaby Rea (Riccio) and Darren Jeffrey (Beaton). Alastair Miles also made an impression in the invented character of Lord Gordon.

Initially billed as concert performances, the production reached the stage in a co-production with San Francisco Opera, with Stewart Laing now described as both director and designer.  Everyone, including the well-drilled chorus, had the music by heart. There was plenty of enthusiastic acting in this semi-staging, even if the uniformly grey palette made for a lack of visual interest.

While Musgrave has spent many years living in the USA, her music was frequently performed on home turf by Sir Alexander Gibson and other notable Scottish musicians. She seems to have rather dropped off the radar in recent years, so we look forward to a renewed assessment. Amazingly, the indefatigable composer recently completed work on another new opera, based on Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando.  Will we be given a chance to see this, or, indeed, some of her later works, so far only performed in the USA?