“Anna Bolena” by Gaetano Donizetti

Анна Болейн

Premiere / date of written: 26 December 1830

Anna Bolena is a tragedia lirica, or opera, in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto after Ippolito Pindemonte's Enrico VIII ossia Anna Bolena and Alessandro Pepoli's Anna Bolena, both recounting the life of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England's King Henry VIII.

It is one of four operas by Donizetti dealing with the Tudor period in English history—in composition order, Il castello di Kenilworth (1829), Anna Bolena (1830), Maria Stuarda (named for Mary, Queen of Scots, it appeared in different forms in 1834 and 1835), and Roberto Devereux (1837, named for a putative lover of Queen Elizabeth I of England). The leading female characters of the latter three operas are often referred to as "the Three Donizetti Queens."

The duet "Sul suo capo aggravi un Dio" between Anna (soprano) and Jane Seymour (mezzo soprano), who later became Henry VIII's third wife, is considered one of the finest in the entire operatic repertoire.

Anna Bolena premiered on 26 December 1830 at the Teatro Carcano in Milan, to "overwhelming success." Weinstock notes that only after this success did Donizetti's teacher, Johann Simon Mayr, "address his former pupil as Maestro." The composer had begun "to emerge as one of three most luminous names in the world of Italian opera", alongside Bellini and Rossini.

Libretti

#	Language	Authors
1	Italian	Felice Romani
2	English

original libretto
line-by-line of the original libretto

Images

Audio recordings

Year	Cast	Conductor, Opera chorus and orchestra	Label, Comment	Buy
2011	Anna Netrebko, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo Elīna Garanča Francesco Meli	Evelino Pido Orchestra and Chorus of the Vienna State Opera	Deutsche Gramophon DDD 0440 073 4725 6 GH2

External links

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sheet Music — www.sheetmusicplus.com