“...drama on a grand scale...crammed with power, treachery, passion and murder from start to finish.”
- Jessica Duchen, BBC Music Magazine
A new production of Mary, Queen of Scots by Thea Musgrave will premiere at Oper Leipzig on December 16, 2023. A grand opera in three acts, it was commissioned and premiered by Scottish Opera in 1977, nearly 50 years ago.
In the new production American soprano Nicole Chevalier takes the title role, with Matthias Foremny at the podium and stage direction by Ilaria Lanzino. A libretto by the composer is based on the play Moray by Amalia Elguera; Mary, the Catholic Queen of Scotland and widowed Queen of France, has been invited by the Protestant Lords to return and assume the Scottish throne, and a struggle to the death ensues as she vies with the powerful men around her for power and control.
This will be Oper Leipzig’s first climate-neutral production, supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation’s “Zero” program.
Musgrave, herself Scotland-born, is still composing today at 95 years old. She is currently completing an operatic telling of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.
