Anna Bolena, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Oct. 15 2011

Anna Bolena was described as Donizetti’s first great opera, and looking through a list of the 30 operas that preceded it, that’s a fair claim. The 30 predecessors are populated with names such as Emilia di Liverpool and Gli esiliati in Siberia (“The Exiles in Siberia”). Raise your hand if you have ever even had the opportunity to see one of these.

Donizetti starts to hit his stride with number 31, Anna Bolena, and finally hits the big time with number 36, L'elisir d'amore. Ultimately he will write 65 operas, more if you include several operas that were revised and given under new names.

This is something of a year for house premieres of Donizetti. Not only was this the first time that the Met has produced Anna Bolena (181 years after its premiere in Milan), but this year San Francisco Opera presented its first performances of Lucrezia Borgia. San Francisco has presented Anna Bolena twice, in 1984 and 1995. I saw both of them, and neither made much of an impression on me. I was hoping that Anna Netrebko would deliver the goods this time.

When the curtain rises on the Met’s production, we see the interior of a room in the palace. The walls are paneled into 2- by 3-foot sections, with the left-hand portion of the wall toward the back of the stage, the right-hand portion near the front, and a wall from back to front connecting the two, all of the same design, all very dark. These walls will move around between scenes, with their other sides representing stone or whitewashed brick exterior walls, and sometime other interior walls. Aside from walls, there is not much of note except at the beginning of the second act, where a very tall, very red bed is positioned on the left side of the same set seen at the beginning of the first act.

Our cast:
Anne Boleyn (Anna Bolena): Anna Netrebko
Jane (Giovanna) Seymour: Ekaterina Gubanova
Mark Smeaton: Tamara Mumford
Lord Richard (Riccardo) Percy: Stephen Costello
Henry VIII (Enrico): Ildar Abdrazakov
Conductor: Marco Armiliato
Production: David McVicar

Anna Netrebko was the star of the show and sang magnificently, although she wasn’t as captivating as she was years ago as Susanna and Zerlina, or even more recently as Norina. Ekaterina Gubanova nearly upstaged her as her rival Jane Seymour. Ildar Abdrazakov made a fine, young, vital, not over-dressed Henry VIII. My friends thought highly of Stephen Costello as Percy, but his voice was tinged with a quality that I didn’t particularly appreciate. The sets were uninspired. The music was pleasant enough, but at best showed only traces of the genius that was to come later. Not quite a beta, despite Anna Netrebko.