[OPERA] Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti), ENO, 18.02.10

[tamaranth]

I'd seen this production before, but possibly with a different cast. Anna Christy was unsettlingly childlike and vulnerable as Lucia: the production really plays up her youth, as well as hints of more than brotherly interest from her wicked sibling.

Noteworthy things: excellent use of light and shadow (Alisa's shadow seeming to close the curtains); Lucia's white dress revealed in the mad scene as red with blood all down her right side. (Though her husband's corpse showed wounds on right, so was she behind him?); glass harmonica right there on stage, looking weirdly like some nineteenth-century 'medical' device. The whole production's reminiscent of an asylum.

On the whole I prefer Donizetti's comedies -- he writes such cheerful melodies and there's cognitive dissonance when the words are about death, madness, betrayal.

This time M and I sat in the upper circle, where the acoustics are so good you can hear the singers almost as clear and close as the coughing spluttering audience.

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I blame Walter Scott for the grim, myself. Though Donizetti could have chosen another book, I guess.