Maria Stuarda Programme Book 2022

DO THAT
later works that became better known and, after a somewhat bowdlerized production in 1865,
the opera disappeared from the stage until 1958. A critical edition would not appear until the
late 1980s, after the rediscovery of Donizetti’s 1835 autograph score.
It’s tempting to think that curtailments of musical expression are a thing long faded from living
memory. But Anglo-Irish politics came into play at the first Dublin International Festival of Music
and the Arts, in 1959, when the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid,
was the festival’s patron. Radio Éireann refused to let its symphony orchestra take part in a
performance of Handel’s Zadok the Priest because the text included the words “And all the
people rejoiced and said ‘God save the king! Long live the king! May the king live forever.’”
When American actress Jayne Mansfield came to Ireland for a cabaret at the Mount Brandon
Hotel in Tralee in 1967 she was blisteringly condemned by the Catholic Bishop of Kerry, Denis
Moynihan, as the “Goddess of Lust”, and he had a letter read out at masses in the diocese
telling people not to attend her performance. When her appearance was cancelled, the venue
cited a van breakdown which affected the band travelling from Dublin.
About 20 years ago the title of an RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra commission was changed
by the composer at the request of RTÉ because of political sensitivities in relation to a Northern
Irish subject. The issue can run in the other direction, too. Gerald Barry, whose operas have
recently been having great success – INO’s CD of his Alice’s Adventures Under Ground is
available on Signum Records – was commissioned by the BBC to write an orchestral work
celebrating the defeat of the Spanish Armada for the 1988 Proms. Barry had to explain that
he just didn’t have it in him to celebrate the defeat of the Armada. Someone from Co. Clare, he
explained, couldn’t be expected to view the Armada in the same light as someone brought up in
Britain. The BBC relented and gave him a free hand.
Russian pianist Alexey Lubimov, who earlier this year helped organise the escape to Berlin of
Ukraine’s leading composer, 84-year-old Valentin Silvestrov, in the face of Russia’s invasion
of his country, experienced police arriving to break up a concert he gave in Moscow in April.
The official explanation was a response to a bomb threat. But the wider interpretation was the
inclusion of the Ukrainian composer’s music on the programme.
We may object when artists are prevented from doing their thing. But when the control or
interference is exerted by state or municipal or religious authorities the most important takeaway is
really straightforward. The battle for control only makes sense in the first place because art matters.
MICHAEL DERVAN
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