Anna Bolena

In April 1957, La Scala staged an opera almost no one alive had seen: Donizetti's Anna Bolena, forgotten for generations. Luchino Visconti directed, Gianandrea Gavazzeni conducted, and Maria Callas sang the condemned queen — one of the summits of her career, and a manifesto.

Her Anna Bolena proved that the neglected operas of Donizetti, Bellini and their age were not museum pieces but living tragedies, waiting only for a singer capable of them. The final scene — the queen's derangement and prayer before the scaffold — became, in her voice, one of the most celebrated performances of the postwar stage. The bel canto revival that transformed the operatic repertoire in the second half of the twentieth century has this production among its foundation stones.

She returned to the role at La Scala in 1958; it remained one of the parts most identified with her art at its height — regal, wounded, unanswerable.

In the Foundation's collection

Photographs and documents of the La Scala Anna Bolena years are preserved in the Foundation's collection. Explore the collection · Licensing

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