The sight of royals at each other’s throats has become a familiar one in recent times, but it’s nothing new. Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, and Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, had a celebrated fight to the finish, the former eventually signing the latter’s death warrant. The fact that the two queens never actually met hasn’t prevented countless imaginative writers, from Friedrich Schiller onwards, creating a fictional confrontation.
Librettist Matthew Jocelyn and composer Brett Dean evidently couldn’t resist the temptation either, even though their version, In spe contra spem (Hope against hope), given its world premiere by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under its principal conductor Edward Gardner, uses original texts of the two protagonists. Described as a “dramatic scena”, In spe contra spem is also, according to the creators, ”a concertante extract from a planned opera”. The work was the final product of Dean’s three-year composing residency with the orchestra.
