"Lon­don, 1601: love, lust and a death sen­tence at the Eng­lish roy­al court - that's just the mix for great Itali­an op­era. "Roberto Devereux" - an op­era for a sov­er­eign, a work for Ed­ita Gruber­ová! The prima donna as­sol­uta of bel canto tri­umphs in this drama. Either an op­era house can ac­quire the ser­vices of "la Gruber­ová" - or they can for­get put­ting on this op­era." - Bav­ari­an State Op­era

With "Roberto Devereux", Don­iz­etti and his lib­ret­tist Cam­marano tried to bring a nat­ur­al por­trait of the last Tu­dor Queen of Eng­land to the stage. Drawn on Brit­ish his­tory, es­pe­cially the in­trigues and love af­fairs, they cre­ated highly vivid and sens­it­ive char­ac­ters in their typ­ic­al Itali­an ro­mantic ad­apt­a­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Gaëtano Don­iz­etti's un­der- stand­ing of the vo­cal line as a psy­cho­gram and thus break­ing through the con­ven­tion­al bound­ar­ies of bel canto op­era, Chris­tof Loy staged a psy­cho­lo­gic­al cham­ber play at the Bav­ari­an State Op­era in the sea­son 2005.

Gif­ted for cre­at­ing the ex­traordin­ary out of ap­par­ently or­din­ary situ­ations, Loy presents a polit­ic­al drama that goes right to the found­a­tions of the char­ac­ters. Re­noun­cing the pathos of an op­u­lent, his­tor­ic cos­tume and set design, jeal­ousy, an­ger, pride, love, in­ca­pa­city, and hope­less­ness work here un­var­nished and with dir­ect­ness (set & cos­tume design: Her­bert Murauer).

Ed­ita Grubervá per­forms an ex­cep­tion­al Elisa­betta - vo­cally as well as dra­mat­ic­ally, and she is well sup­por­ted by Roberto Aron­ica as the Earl of Es­sex; in the role of Sara: Jeanne Pi­l­and's with her warm, fer­vid mezzo, and Al­bert Schagidul­lin as the Duke of Not­ting­ham. Friedrich Haid­er con­ducts, in su­per­i­or style, a very supple play­ing Bav­ari­an State Or­ches­tra.

"Roberto Devereux" is avail­able on DVD, to­geth­er with two mak­ing-of films by Chris­ti­an K. Weiß: "Be­hind the Op­era" - a film re­veal­ing the artists' in­ten­tions, plus: "From Stage to Screen" - giv­ing in­sight in­to the pro­duc­tion pro­cess of an op­era re­cord­ing for TV/DVD.