Metropolitan Opera Preview: Lucia di Lammermoor

High notes and high tragedy in the Highlands.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Joseph Calleja is Edgardo in the Met's revival of Lucia di Lammermoor.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

The bride of Lammermoor returns to the Met stage, in Mary Zimmerman's entertaining yet controversial production.

Opera Review: To Insanity, and Beyond!

Lucia di Lammermoor returns to the Met.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Natalie Dessay and Joseph Calleja in the Met's revival of Lucia di Lammermoor
Photo by Ken Howard © 2010 The Metropolitan Opera

Most performances of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor center on the Mad Scene, also known as Act III, Scene 2. This 17-minute series of arias is a musical and dramatic tour de force for the soprano. In the right hands, it is a total show-stopper.

Mary Zimmerman's attractive production of Lucia moves the opera's action to the Victorian era before literally dissolving into the heroine's tortured mind. (Think Jane Austen on acid.) But its greatest strength is that it goes beyond the superficial warbling of the leading lady and explores Lucia as what it really is: a rock-ribbed, full-blooded family drama with as much excitement and stagecraft as the mature works of Giuseppe Verdi. Small wonder: Donizetti's librettist Salvatore Cammarano wrote the book for Il Trovatore.