Although only nine years younger than the English monarch, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (1542 1587), w as t he daughter of Queen Elizabeth I s (1533 1603) first cousin, James V of Scotland (his mother was Margaret Tudor, elder sister to Henry VIII). This close relationship was at the root of their mortal conflict: Mary maintained all her life, in spite of allegiances, treaties, battles, intrigues, reversals, and murders, that she was heir to the throne of England (as well as thrones of France and Scotland), if not in Elizabeth s immediate stead, at least upon the event of her death. To put an impossibly complicated political and religious situation into a nutshell (even Schiller could not deal with all of it in his epic drama), Mary s insistence was intolerable to the Virgin Queen. In fact Mary ruled in Scotland for a scant six years. Mary s father died six days after her birth; thus she became queen regnant before it was assured that she would live at all, and the government was entrusted to a sequence of noble regents. At five she was sent to France as the intended wife of the Dauphin Francis, son of the powerful Henry II (who fully purposed thus to acquire Scotland), and grew up in the French court, where she was a great favorite, skilled in music, poesy (in French, Latin, Greek, Spanish, and Italian, as well as Scots and English), horsemanship, falconry, and needlework. She married at sixteen, her husband died a year later, and she returned to Scotland at eighteen as Queen. She was unprepared for the snake pit that awaited her. During that violently turbulent year of 1560 a group of Protestant Lords under the leadership of John Knox (c. 1514 1572) had succeeded in ousting Scotland s Catholic government and Mary s current regent (her mother), and establishing the Reformed Church, effecting a formal break between the Scottish Kirk (Presbyterian) and Rome. Mary, always a Catholic, hoped for mutual tolerance, but conflict broke out at every turn. She married her cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, four years later, but in February 1567 he was assassinated. She was herself accused of complicity in the plot, tried, and despite lack of any verdict, imprisoned and forced to abdicate in favor of her one-yearold son James VI of Scotland, later James I of England. Needless to say, all the regents for the young king thereafter were Protestants. After an abortive military attempt to regain her throne, Mary fled to England to seek the protection of Queen Elizabeth I of England. The consequences of this misstep are too well known to rehearse here. The viol quartet PARTHENIA brings early music into the present with repertoire ancient to freshly commissioned, animated with a ravishing sound and a remarkable sense of ensemble. Parthenia is presented in concerts across the United States, and produces its own series in New York City, collaborating regularly with the world s foremost early music specialists. The quartet has been featured in numerous prestigious festivals and series as well. Parthenia s performances range from its popular touring program, When Music & Sweet Poetry Agree, a celebration of Elizabethan poetry and music, to the complete viol fantasies of Purcell, as well as the complete instrumental works of Robert Parsons, and commissions and premieres of new works annually.
Countertenor and composer Ryland Angel has built a fine international reputation on both the opera and concert stage in repertoire ranging from the Baroque to operatic commissions at opera houses and concert halls.
Boston-born Dongsok Shin studied modern piano throughout college, and since the early 1980s has specialized exclusively in early keyboard instruments. A member of the internationally acclaimed REBEL baroque ensemble since 1997, Shin has appeared on stages throughout the United States.
