Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We saw Donzinetti's "Roberto Devereaux" yesterday, in a great production.  The whole ball of wax is Queen Elizabeth I and the soprano Rabinvesky tears apart the scenery.  Her voice is sublime, and the story so powerful that we've seen multiple versions on screen and television, and are about to see yet another film about her and Mary, Queen of Scots.  But this show focuses on the terror of having your father behead your mother when you are three years old, and seeing many fall in the grab for power.  Her fear is palpable, that if she gives over any control, to a husband perhaps, her own head may be next.  She wants to love and trust, but cannot.  She wants to live most of all, but it comes with a high cost, and at the end of this opera, she finds it too great to bear.  What a bloody world the monarchy in England was.  And even today, to be trapped inside it resembles a prison, with glass walls that expose you to the stings and barbs of the world.  I thought of Princess Diana, not allowed to love, but treated as a brood mare, and relentlessly attacked from all sides.  I even thought of Meghan Markle, now trapped in a snare that perhaps her princely husband cannot protect her from.  Who would wish it?  Not me.