Amongst the seventy works composed by Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848), only three, The Elixir of Love, Don Pasquale, and Lucia Di Lammermoor were regularly performed in the first half of the twentieth century, and the most popular of these, Lucia, was often presented in truncated form. After World War II, a burgeoning recording industry in search of novelty, coupled with a nascent interest in the bel canto repertoire led by Maria Callas and enthusiastically followed by Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge and such singers as Montserrat Caballé and Beverly Sills, rediscovered and re-evaluated other long neglected Donizetti works.

Like the hapless queen herself, Maria Stuarda (1834), had a traumatic history. Repressive censorship in the Kingdom of Naples resulted in forced changes to the libretto before the first performance. The singers suffered from temperament and were often out of voice. A failure at its première, the opera was revived the following year in its original form and thereafter had limited success. Not until the 1970s was there a serious reappraisal of the opera, and indeed a growing realisation that Maria Stuarda contained spectacular singing roles, appealing melodies, and, above all, compelling drama.