It is up to the ambitious and wretched Earl of Essex to take the honor of the title, but the protagonist, it is clear, is her: Elizabeth I Tudor, the Virgin Queen daughter of the “tremendous Eighth Henry.” Even more, the protagonist is the loneliness of power, absolute on earth and disarmed in the face of the passage of time and feelings that can only be condemned to unhappiness, not extinguished. Like a single sequence, Donizetti’s musical framing knows no breaks and focuses increasingly on Elisabetta’s drama. The first act presents the four main characters and their relationships (Elisabeth loves Robert, who loves Sara back but maintains an ambiguous condescension toward the queen; Nottingham is married to Sara and is Roberto’s best friend); in the second, events precipitate (Elizabeth discovers that Roberto loves another, Nottingham discovers that this other is his wife); the last act is the epilogue of loneliness adrift, with the desperate showdown between the couple, Roberto’s farewell to life, and Elizabeth’s grand scene, ready to forgive but too late, exhausted and delirious.

In Donizetti’s time the affairs of English royalty were depopulated in opera houses. Gossip about crowned heads and atmospheric settings-a combination that continues to work today. What makes the difference between the consumer product and the work of art for Roberto Devereux is Donizetti’s ability to go beyond and show the full theatrical power and depth of Belcanto.