Italian opera with English material: After passion comes worries about power

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, lived!” – British students are allowed to recite this clever mnemonic when history lessons are about Henry VIII and his love life. The monarch devoured six wives, and Gaetano Donizetti’s 30th opera out of a total of 64 (according to conservative counting) is about his second wife, one of the two beheaded. The historical Anne Boleyn is split in head and torso by the best executioner in England on May 19, 1536. In the production of “Anna Bolena” on December 15, 2023 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, director David Alden spares the audience any form of macabre pantomime: the sword falls with the curtain.

In general, the game management leaves the erotic agony of death to the extremely comfortable material. Over three hours, in two acts, an intriguing complex of desire between classes and genders unfolds. Anna Bolena (Federica Lombardi) craves power, she successfully plays with her weapons, puts the horny Enrico (Ricardo Fassi) under high pressure until his cauldron bursts. A sex explosion that not only tears apart his marriage, but also the Catholic Church in England. Because divorce is convenient and, as God’s representative on earth, you can indulge in bigamy with impunity for a few months, unlike the people who have been whipped into chastity, the Anglican Church came into being.

But the victorious Anna with the crown on her skull also has to learn that the tyrannical aspect of the monarchy does not only consist in the creation of passionate facts. The king with private papal authority maintains a supreme court for behavioral therapy: good, non-binding advice for the egomaniac. When Bolena simply does not want to give birth and there is no male heir to the throne (there is no idea yet of the size of her only daughter, Elizabeth I), she falls into her husband’s disgrace for pragmatic reasons. Affairs are attributed to her, for Donizetti’s poet Felice Romani these dalliances, bel canto fully romantic, are the only important aspect of the historical drama: a good three quarters of the second act consist of the sighs of those doomed to die.

Conductor Enrique Mazzola nevertheless insists on unabridged fidelity to the work, which becomes a feat of strength towards the end. Because the male characters appear small both in the context of the production and vocally in the German Opera that evening, their self-pity as Geseier adds to the great, final madness of the monarch. Mezzo-soprano Karis Tucker as Smeton (the queen’s page) acts hysterically out of place. Percy, the old love of Anna Bolena, sung by René Barbera, only seems to be physically present. Chance Jonas-O’Toole, as Officer Sir Hervey, drives everyone into the gut with the long arm of the law. Outfitter Gideon Davey puts the ensemble in vaguely historical costumes with gentle S&M elements, which further undermines the credibility of the men in Berlin-Charlottenburg, from the king to the page.

“Anna Bolena” is the final breakthrough of the workhorse Donizetti in 1830. The son of a pawnshop porter and a seamstress, who came from a poor background in Bergamo, had the rare luck of being able to study with the Bavarian opera composer Johann Simon Mayr in a music school for the needy. Memories of poverty and hardship drove Donizetti to write up to five operas a year – as a composer you were not particularly high in the pecking order of the Italian music world in the 19th century, and fees were comparatively meager. Despite the incredible output, the quality of this opera should be emphasized, which can easily compete with Vincenzo Bellini’s “La Sonnambula”, which was commissioned for the Teatro Carcano in Milan at the same time.

Restraint in the stage design – which in the European context of contemporary opera decoration means that upper-class furniture stands in front of rotating tiled walls – was exceptionally good last Friday. Zero ideas in the production revealed the multifaceted nature of aristocratic life on earth: everyone always suffers under the king. Although Anna Bolena dies in delirious self-pity, she dreams miserably of her wedding day, but in one last gasp she recognizes the injustice in her person: “Manca, ahi! manca a compire il delitto, D’Anna il sangue, e versato sarà” (“All that is missing, alas, is the blood of Anna to complete the crime and it will be shed”).

The real Anne Boleyn was not granted such dignity. She thanked her ruler with a stiff upper lip under her sword. Ten days later, Henry married the Catholic Jane Seymour.

Next performances: December 22nd, December 26th, March 11th, March 16th, March 19th.

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