Salzburg puts Lisette Oropesa's star into orbit

The queen is not just " Maria Stuarda ." The queen is Lisette Oropesa . And she rules not with her voice alone, but with a stage presence that transcends score , character, and story. She doesn't tread the stage: she orbits. She gravitates on the rotating axis of Ulrich Rasche 's galactic montage, whose version of Donizetti 's drama engenders a planetary system of power , exile, and damnation . And there she appears— Oropesa —dressed like a bel canto Princess Leia, suspended in a field of concentric hoops, defying gravity, silhouetted in metallic lights, offering the fragility and determination of a martyr illuminated from within.

The American soprano vibrates with a logic that is simultaneously technical and mystical. Her emission is pure, flexible, organic. But what dazzles is not so much the perfection we already appreciated this year at the Teatro Real , but the humanity with which she resurrects bel canto in the weightlessness of dramaturgy. She sings to survive. She sings to soar. And when she bids farewell to the world—"Deh! tu di un'umile preghiera"—we are not listening to an aria, but rather witnessing a sonic epiphany . Her voice curves, gathers, offers itself as a last resistance against the machinery that oppresses it.

Opposite Oropesa's brilliance, Kate Lindsey embodies the perfect opposite of Queen Elizabeth 's scepter. She is not the star, but the shadow. Not the light, but the oppressive system. It's not just that she's been given a costume with a funereal tone, tight and geometric. It's that Lindsey sings as if she were made of obsidian . Her conception of the character is restraint, bitterness, density. Her Elisabetta— more Death Star than human queen—doesn't seek emotion or empathy. She imposes distance, threat, emptiness. And she does so with a voice as sharp as a ceremonial dagger, projected from coldness, without the need to caress or convince.

The duel between the two is not a clash. It's an eclipse. And the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra doesn't accompany it: it explains it. Because Antonello Manacorda 's conducting reveals itself as the third indispensable vertex of this conjunction. His work is meticulous, sensorial, and chromatically precise. He doesn't seek sensationalism or grandiloquence. He seeks the texture of the song , its internal breathing. The cellos cradle. The woodwinds converse. The phrasing breathes. And the music , instead of pushing the stage , caresses it from within , allowing the singers to express themselves as if the pit were rocking them. There is a telluric warmth in the strings. A forest scent in the woodwinds. And, above all, a liturgical respect for the fragility of the voice within the limitations of a space as gigantic as the Grosses Festspielhaus .

The "Maria Stuarda" project represents an ideological transformation in the very heart of Salzburg . It is the first time in a hundred years that it has been performed. Donizetti has been elevated to the center stage . And to do so, it has been necessary to dethrone—or at least silence— Mozart and Richard Strauss , the immovable pillars of Salzburg's identity . The gesture has something of sacrilege and something of redemption. Because until now, bel canto had been treated at the festival as a footnote, a marginal whim. Only " Don Pasquale " and " Lucia di Lammermoor " had appeared sporadically on the bill. Now, Donizetti is being treated as a major tragedian .

And Rasche responds to the project with a stage installation as powerful as it is risky and sterile. Rotating discs evoke orbits, cycles of power, repeated sentences. Space becomes a machine. Time , choreography . And the opera , a mechanical ritual . The problem is that the stage concept —dazzling when the curtain rises—exhausts itself.

What begins as a hypnotic mechanism — the idea of destiny in the galactic circles that oppress the characters—ends up falling into its own liturgy. The form doesn't evolve. The visual language becomes an obstacle. The metaphor becomes a cage . And the dramatic tension that should grow with the scenes dissolves into nuanceless repetition .

The male performers do not compensate for the lack of drive . Bekhzod Davronov , as Leicester , sings with elegance and a well-chiseled line, but does not project the tragic charisma of a divided man. Aleksei Kulagin , as Talbot , offers honesty rather than depth. And Thomas Lehman , as Cecil , fulfills his duties effectively without providing any real dramatic weight.

Perhaps the lesser balance of male performances is no coincidence. The opera revolves around two women and the machinery that pits them against each other. The men are on the sidelines. Inert, functional, or residual. Oropesa sings as if her voice could save her. Lindsey sings as if she were already condemned. And between the two, power unfolds like an abstract war where the singing doesn't accompany the text: it challenges it. It redeems it.

And then we understand that "Maria Stuarda" is not a story of love or jealousy. It's a meditation on sacrifice . An elegy to the impossibility of the powerful woman . A black mass where the choir doesn't sing, but sentences. Where the queen dies not because she loses, but because she could never win.

This is how it all ends: with a beheaded queen, with a woman who forgives herself, and with the theater as a machine that doesn't represent , but executes . There's no music left. There's no blood left. Only a suspended voice . And the echo of a power that has triumphed ingloriously .