Elizabeth I of England Plot of 1586, Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the royal council keenly assembled a case against her. At first, Elizabeth resisted calls for Mary's death. By late 1586, she had been persuaded to sanction her trial and execution on the evidence of letters written during the Babington Plot. Elizabeth's proclamation of the sentence announced that "the said Mary, pretending title to the same Crown, had compassed and imagined within the same realm divers things tending to the hurt, death and destruction of our royal person." On 8 February 1587, Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire. After Mary's execution,
Mary, Queen of Scots (opera) Opera. Other significant later performances have included its first performance in German in a new production at the Städtische Bühnen Oper in Bielefeld (1984) and performances conducted by Musgrave at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco performed by San Francisco Spring Opera (1979). Mary's arias also appear in Musgrave's 40-minute triptych, "Three Women: Queen, Mistress, Slave", a narrated assemblage of scenes for the leading female characters from "Mary, Queen of Scots" and Musgrave's later operas, "Simon Bolivar", and "Harriet, the Woman Called Moses". The triptych had its world premiere in January 1999 at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco with