Overview
Performed at Madrid's historic Teatro Real in 2018, Ivor Bolton conducts Benjamin Britten's opera based on Lytton Strachey's 1928 Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History. In her repeated clashes with the Earl of Essex-a longtime favorite of the queen who was ultimately put to death for treason-Elizabeth I is depicted as flawed and vain, human and sympathetic.
Cast
- Anna Caterina Antonacci as Queen Elizabeth I
- Leonardo Capalbo as Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex
- Paula Murrihy as Frances, Countess of Essex
- Duncan Rock as Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy
- Sophie Bevan as Penelope, Lady Rich
- Leigh Melrose as Sir Robert Cecil
- David Soar as Sir Walter Raleigh
- Benedict Nelson as Henry Cuffe
- Elena Copons as A Lady-in-Waiting
- James Creswell as A Blind Ballad-Singer