Elza van den Heever (left) has a few choice, melodic words for Joyce DiDonato in the Met’s production of “Maria Stuarda.” (Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)
A clash of rival queens, all flashing eyes and snarled insults, forms the climax of Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda.”
In the finale to the first act of this melodrama, which on Monday made its Met debut, Mary Queen of Scots calls Elizabeth I “vil bastarda” — a lowborn bastard.
The phrase was considered so inflammatory back in 1835 that the La Scala world premiere was shut down after a single performance. At the Met, though, the emotional temperature ran a little lower.
True, Joyce DiDonato’s Mary spat out those fighting words in a tangy chest voice, but it was hard to believe she meant them.
In the long and demanding title role of the opera, the American mezzo offered lean, crisp tone and meticulous musicality. She sustained the long, soaring lines with seemingly infinite breath and shaped the phrases with nuanced dynamics.
What was missing, though, was a sense of extravagance in her portrayal of the famously passionate Queen of Scots. From the vast Met auditorium, DiDonato’s compact voice seemed at times to evaporate, and she skimped on high notes.
On her same level of restrained good taste were warm-voiced tenor Matthew Polenzani as Mary’s lover, Leicester, and suave bass Matthew Rose as the courtier Talbot.
More over-the-top was Elza van den Heever’s Queen Elizabeth, her tart soprano sounding appropriately witchy as the 6-foot diva galumphed around the stage like the Hulk in a hoop skirt.
Aside from her campy antics, David McVicar’s production was brooding and dark, set as it was in 16th-century Tudor England. As sets by John MacFarlane seamlessly transformed from throne room to meadow to prison cell, McVicar grouped the performers in a series of handsome, static stage pictures.
His only blunder was the undignified staging of the queen’s march to her execution, when he sent DiDonato tiptoeing up a nearly vertical staircase in a baggy red nightgown.
In keeping with the no-nonsense mood of the evening, Maurizio Benini conducted with precision if little rhythmic drive. He made only a few small cuts in the uneven score, lowering the keys of several scenes to suit DiDonato’s deep mezzo.
This “Stuarda” premiere was the centerpiece of a New Year’s Eve gala at the Met — though come to think of it, so sober and sensible a performance seems an odd way to ring in 2013.