| Gloriana |
The Earl of Essex, favourite of Queen Elizabeth I of England, who is disturbed by the enmity of Lord Mountjoy and Essex, is first seen in a duel with his enemy in the opening scene. Essex begs to be sent to Ireland to put down the rebellion there but the Queen demurs. She visits Norwich and is entertained with a masque, while Essex expresses his continued impatience. His sister, Lady Penelope Rich, is in love with Mountjoy, while Essex himself complains to his wife of the Queen's unwillingness to agree at once to his demands. At a ball Lady Essex is humiliated by the Queen, who, when the ladies withdraw to change, takes her elaborate dress, worn as an intended challenge to the Queen at the insistence of Essex, and wears it herself. He is now given his wish and appointed Lord Deputy in Ireland. There he fails and returns, bursting into the Queen's dressing-room, and now makes further trouble in England. An attempted rebellion fails and he is condemned to death, in spite of the pleas of his wife and sister, leaving the Queen to prepare herself for her own lonely death. Commissioned by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, Gloriana , the name by which her homonymous predecessor was known to her courtier- poets, was not immediately successful at its official opening performance before an audience described by one distinguished member of the cast as 'cold fish', many of whom might rather have warmed to a less demanding Merrie England. The Choral Dances of the second act are performed someArial out of their dramatic context, a score that combines the contemporary with allusions to the music of an earlier period and includes lute-songs for Essex and dances of the Elizabethan period in the ball scene. The rôles of Essex and Queen Elizabeth were written for Peter Pears and Joan Cross, the original Peter Grimes and Ellen Orford in the opera that established English opera in post-war Britain, Peter Grimes . |