There’s plenty of drama, as well as superb music, in Gaetano Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena,” currently in a spectacular production at the Kennedy Center’s Washington National Opera. And director Stephen Lawless has heightened the drama wherever possible.

The drama begins in Donizetti’s choice of historical material. Anne Boleyn was the second wife of England’s King Henry VIII, a man who had gotten rid of his previous wife because she did not give him a male heir.