Maria Stuarda was only really rediscovered in the 1950s. Its Handel-like bitching queens scene – Elizabeth I of England versus Mary, Queen of Scots, in a meeting that only Schiller made take place – began to endear it to recordable prima donnas in the new LP era. In fact, this 1835 score is now the second most recorded Donizetti opera seria; its current total of 21 versions beats the rest of the “Tudor Ring” (Anna Bolena and Roberto Devereux) but trails behind Lucia di Lammermoor’s 64. This release is the soundtrack of a Pier Luigi Pizzi production at the Sferisterio Opera Festival in August 2007, an outdoor event at a sizeable theatre in Macerata, Italy, a film of which was released on Naxos DVD last year.

Ironically, here is very much the kind of ensemble performance at which, in the early Callas/Sutherland era, the movers and shakers of the London-orientated record industry would have sniffed loudly. Praise be, it has a cast full of real Italians. Maria Pia Piscitelli’s red-blooded portrayal of Mary is suitably gracious and put-upon, and manages pride and inflexibility too. Act 2’s “Guarda: sui prati appare, o nube! che lieve per l’aria ti aggiri” and “Nella pace del mesto riposo” are delivered with power, beauty and high notes to burn. Later in Act 3 Mary’s confession to the disguised Talbot is well coloured and her progress to the scaffold emotional without recourse to self-pity. Roberto de Biasio is a charismatic yet evidently selfish Leicester. He has bright and secure Italianate tone with quick vibrato – like a voice from an earlier age – and an intelligent range of expression and tonal colour.

Laura Polverelli, enjoying the vocal acrobatics on offer, fields a more nuanced characterisation of Elisabetta than the vindictive, bitchy, jealous harpy the character can become in performance. Riccardo Frizza leads the proceedings with a stylish hand, encompassing the intriguing extra dimension of the third act, where Donizetti and librettist Giuseppe Bardari go some way towards presenting Mary’s death as Catholic martyrdom. The recording is more than serviceably vivid for “live” performance conditions. Of course, no serious bel canto lover will turn their back on what Caballé, Gruberová and Sutherland (not to mention Carreras as “Lie-ches-terrr”) have to offer on rival sets. But as an overall performance finely conducted and as an economical way of acquiring a compelling opera, the Naxos release is most useful.