“What place is this?” asks Queen Elizabeth, badly briefed on her arrival at Fotheringay. It’s a question we may have been asking, on and off, since the curtain first rose on a prison-like structure which appears to be where the Queen herself is living. The view beyond changes colour (sunset red for one scene, watery blue for another), but the cage is there throughout, with its perilous walkways and central steps leading up to a block placed in readiness for use in the opera’s last moments. Of course the score’s stage directions for the scene at Fothingeray specify great trees standing on either side, and Mary Stuart refers in the text “these fields” and their fair flowers, but it has been many a year since the score’s stage directions have been anything more than a bad old joke. I expect the cage is symbolic or matephorical; at any rate, they’re all in it.

Maria Stuarda comes with other visual problems. Mary herself was reckoned a great beauty and we all think we know what Elizabeth looked like. Here, in this production they might even be better cast, as far as looks are concerned, if they were to exchange roles. In short, I can’t see much in favour of this as a video. The star actor (non-singing) is a gigantic headsman who stands throughout the long final scene by the block up to the steps, like Patience on an appalling monument, at one point striding down to tap Mary on the shoulder and remind her what she’s there for.

Musically, the performance is efficient, with brisk tempi and well drilled ensembles. Mariella Devia sings her final solos with feeling and some richness of tone. Anna Caterina Antonacci is well up to the technical demands of her music but, contrary to the general opinion, I do not find a great deal of character in the voice itself. Francesco Meli is a likeable tenor, still (in 2008) not reliably effective in his upper register. On the whole, the DVD from Bergamo (Dynamic, 4/03) is preferable, and there is always the English Mary Stuart (Warner), Janet Baker in the titlerole, Mackerras conducting, good to remember and good to come back to.