In 1978, memories were fresh of Beverly Sills as Donizetti’s imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, awaiting decapitation by fiat of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I. It was just the moment for City Opera, where she had sung the part a half dozen years before, to mount a contemporary prequel by the Scottish composer Thea Musgrave! In The New York Times, Harold C. Schonberg judged the out-of-town premiere in Norfolk, Virginia, “thoroughly professional work, better than most contemporary operas.” He correctly forecast a big career for Ashley Putnam, who sang Mary. The duel between Jake Gardner’s Moray and Barry Busse’s Bothwell impressed him as the best “since Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn had it out in Robin Hood,” leaving any swordplay ever seen at the Met in the dust. On the opposite side of the ledger, Schonberg concluded that Musgrave possessed no “distinguished lyric gift,” and that the opera was a failure. But maybe Musgrave’s time was yet to come? Here, to make that case, are Heidi Stober as Mary, Thomas Mole as Moray, the half-brother who turned against her, and Thomas Kinch as Bothwell, her ill-fated third husband. Clelia Cafiero conducts the production, designed and directed by Stewart Laing. —Matthew Gurewitsch