Anna Bolena [SEP] characters
Anna Bolena
Anna Bolena is a tragic opera ("tragedia lirica") in two acts composed by Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto after Ippolito Pindemonte's "Enrico VIII ossia Anna Bolena" and Alessandro Pepoli's "Anna Bolena", both recounting the life of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England's King Henry VIII.
It is one of four operas by Donizetti dealing with the Tudor period in English history—in composition order, "Il castello di Kenilworth" (1829), "
Anna Bolena" (1830), "Maria Stuarda" (named for Mary, Queen of Scots, it appeared in different forms in 1834 and 1835), and "Roberto Devereux" (1837, named for a putative lover of Queen Elizabeth I of England). The leading female characters of the latter three operas are often referred to as "the Three Donizetti Queens."
"Anna Bolena" premiered on 26 December 1830 at the Teatro Carcano in Milan, to "overwhelming success." Weinstock notes that only