Lucia
There were wolfhounds.
I’ve been to see Lucia di Lammermoor—Live from the Met[ropolitan Opera] at your friendly local cinema. Yes, it’s pretty much always the same crowd* and quite a few of them are beginning to look familiar.** So, I have to say, are the ads for the other productions, but hey, I have my head down over my knitting.***
The wolfhounds appear in the very first scene: Lucia’s evil brother Enrico’s equally ratbaggy captain of the guard is out scouring the landscape for the Mystery Intruder they suspect is Edgardo, sworn blood enemy of not only Enrico but Enrico’s house and lineage—you know the way these feuds go. Except that Edgardo and Lucia may have managed to fall in love with each other and to be meeting in secret, which would be inconvenient and a really bad idea. Hence wolfhounds. Who make a pass over the papier mache landscape and say, not here, boss, and are led away again, so that Enrico and the captain of the guard can rant at each other about Edgardo’s turpitude and Lucia’s treachery. I love opera because it’s so sedate.
Lucia is one of the oldest and hoariest of the grand opera war horses—not oldest in chronology, necessarily (1835, which probably counts as early-ish), but hoariest in terms of it being one of the ones that if you’ve ever heard of opera at all, it’ll be one of the ones you’ve heard of. And yes, it’s based on the Sir Walter Scott novel The Bride of Lammermoor, which means it’s silly. It’s one of the ones I grew up with—and hated: remember my great epiphany to do with opera was escaping home to go to college and discovering to my horror I couldn’t live without all the shrieking—but I hated this one particularly because the girl is such a wet. SUCH. A. WET. Geezum arrgh. I saw Anna Netrebko in this production on TV not all that long ago, so I probably did my rave and recant on the subject of Lucia then and should cut to the chase now.†
So, Lucia has fallen in love with her family’s arch-enemy, who swears eternal devotion just before he gallops off on an unspecified mission. Her evil brother, however, is on to them, and intercepts their letters. He, meanwhile, has to make Lucia marry some bloke who is going to restore the family fortune and honour (for equally unspecified reasons, although I suppose a magnificent case of the hots for a bloke’s sister can move you to extreme proposals). I don’t know whether I’ve just not been paying attention for the last forty years (highly possible) or whether the political aspect of Enrico’s desperation is brought out a bit more in this translation, but even as an evil brother he’s more sympathetic as something more than a wastrel. And here I’d better declare my bias, which is that Ludovic Tezier is my latest hottie. ††
But the essential problem with Lucia is usually that Lucia is a dishrag and her brother is a cartoon villain: all he needs is the curly moustaches and some rope to tie her to a railroad track. And the feminism of my youth didn’t really allow for a lot of appreciation of circumstances: what I saw was Lucia folding under her brother’s bullying—and then going mad. Please. But given a half-sympathetic portrayal you start thinking—yes, but what could she do? She’s out in the wilds of Scotland somewhere with her brother, and her only two friends are a lady’s-maid/companion and a chaplain both of whom believe that Edgardo has betrayed her (there is this forged letter, you see. Enrico doesn’t leave these things to chance), and that she should marry her brother’s choice. And I doubt she has her own bank account.
In my experience, Lucia is the soprano’s opera—Lucia’s opera—with some pretty exciting piffling around the edges from the boys: Edgardo needs to be able to bring off his final aria, which is after Lucia’s possibly-most-famous-episode-in-all-opera Mad Scene. This means he not only has to have a voice that will bring you back from wherever Lucia left you—and a good Lucia will take you a long way away—but the nerve to bring it off. And Enrico needs authority—as well as the kind of baritone that rants well. If I was expecting anything tonight, I was expecting Natalie Dessay to blow both her tenor and her baritone off the stage—she really is that good. She has not only the voice but the presence and the acting skill††† to do anything. ‡
And she was superb. How many frelling Lucia mad scenes have I seen? Lots. But I love the music, and a good soprano will make you feel it all over again, and Dessay is well past merely good.‡‡ But her tenor stood up to her—not just in their love scene in the first act, but in that final scene after Lucia has eaten all available scenery in her mad scene and Edgardo is left with the crumbs. I was pulled in all over again by Edgardo’s despair—during intermission Renee Fleming‡‡‡ referred to his having an ‘old fashioned’ voice, like the tenors of the golden age, whatever that’s supposed to mean . . . but it is the rich furry end of tenors and it weeps extremely well.§
But the revelation for me tonight, and the heart of the opera—for me tonight—was the scene between Lucia and Enrico, the evil brother, when he’s trying to force her to agree to marry Arturo.§§ These two actors are beautifully matched, so as well as sounding terrific the power struggle between them is riveting—I had to keep reminding myself to breathe.
And furthermore it’s a good production. I rarely like a production well enough to be willing to sit through it again unless the singers are really special (which would have been the case here, but it’s nice not to have to suffer for it), because I mostly think that what directors do to opera these days should be shot and buried in the back garden. This production, just by the way, is the work of a woman, still a comparatively rare thing in opera. And I will have mentioned this the last time I saw it, but something that works—I think—extremely well is that the ghost Lucia sees in the first act, and which is supposed to prove she’s already a few peats short of a bog and sets her up for going seriously round the twist with a dagger in the third act, is really there: a dancer dressed and painted ghostly white appears and stalks her. Very effective and very creepy. And then in the final scene when Edgardo is getting ready to off himself so he can join Lucia in heaven§§§, Lucia herself shows up as a ghost . . . and has her hands on the knife when he stabs himself. Indeed the way it’s set up it looks like she may be the one shoving it in—just in case he changes his mind, perhaps. I think this works a treat#, and also insures that you aren’t left with any icky sentimental feelings about the lovers reuniting after death.
All that’s left is for Enrico to run off to the Fiji Islands and take up with a fruit bat, but incomprehensibly the librettist left this out.
* * *
* And I’m becoming The Knitting Lady. I’m astonished—and possibly a little dismayed—to report that I didn’t see anyone else knitting, in spite of the excellent model I presented last opera. I do not understand these people who can stand—er, sit—who can bear to sit around and do nothing for a whole series of interminable intermissions.^ Some people, of course, chat.^^ Brrrrrr. No, not an option. And I would totally understand giving yourself a headache and bobbly retinas by trying to read in the half light of theatre intermission—which is what I would be doing if I hadn’t been forced^^^ to discover knitting. But having read the synopsis apparently almost everybody else just falls into a coma . . . I wouldn’t want to think there was any direct relationship between these two actions.
^ Well, okay, only two. But they were interminable. Nearly.
^^ Overheard: The only other Donizetti opera I’ve seen was La Forza del Destino. —My needles stumble and pause. This is a bit like saying The only other Tolkien I’ve read is Harry Potter and the Giant Pumpkin of Doom. Fortunately this pathetic creature’s companion put her straight, or I’d’ve had to.
^^^ You Know Who You Are.
** Or, in one case, her jewellery. Didn’t remember her at all, but it’s a knockout necklace.
But they’re all old. I know I keep saying this, but I hope this little pocket of high Tory well-offness is not representative of the UK Live from the Met-going crowd, or opera is in bigger trouble than I think.
*** I finished two hellhound blanket squares.
† When have I ever cut to the chase. Sigh.
†† http://ludovictezier.blogspot.com/
††† She’s also a gift to the short tenors of the world—tenors are always short, it’s in their contract—being maybe five foot if she’s standing on her tiptoes, and as big around as my wrist. And here her tenor broke his contractual obligation and was a normal height.
‡ I’ve liked her voice since I first heard her—six or so years ago I think—but I really fell for her when I saw her in La Fille du Regiment. She’s also got spectacular comic timing which for some reason caught me off guard.
‡‡ And on the subject of how little she is, she faints at the end—and one of the chorus doesn’t merely pick her up off the floor, he tosses her up and catches her as she comes down. Ah the drama.
‡‡‡ Who was wearing the ugliest orange jacket I have ever seen in my life. Renee, honey, lose that designer. He’s not doing you any favours.
§ http://www.josephcalleja.com/ I notice the lead review seems to agree with me.
§§ One of the most thankless roles in all opera. He has one brief scene being a prat, and is then murdered off-stage by his bride.
§§§ Heaven? Really? Extenuating circumstances and all, but . . . even so.
# The director/producer was another of the intermission interviewees, and she was saying of her idea to make the ghost real that the ghosts in the novel are real and that ‘Scotland of course is very haunted’ or words to that effect in her rich American accent and I winced while most of the theatre laughed.
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