A friend once told me that he stopped going to opera because he got tired of watching women die. The only difference in the ending of most operas, especially the 19th-century operas, which are so often performed because of their melodic seductiveness, is how rather than why the leading women die.
I enjoy Lucia di Lammermoor far more than most because Lucia rebels against the role meted out to her. Granted, she must go mad to do so. But her madness leads to the ultimate casting off of the oppression of her body: she kills her politically acquired husband on their wedding night. Kills him bloodily and exultingly. Perhaps it’s a win for romantic love, but more it’s a win for the composer’s recognition of the character’s need to control her life, sexually and emotionally, even though that control is out of her reach and Lucia is doomed from the moment of her unhappy birth. The mad scene was impressively handled by Donizetti: the elaborate coloratura firmly grounded in passion and emotional sorrow.
Soprano Nadine Sierra currently has the thrilling opportunity to sing Donizetti’s comment on girls rule in San Francisco Opera’s production of Lucia. And sing it she does, beautifully. She doesn’t blast her way through Lucia’s coloratura passages – channeling the Queen of the Night could be a temptation – but rather depends on the range of softer dynamics, spinning out those hair-raisingly high notes with delicacy as well as substance. The pianissimo gave her notes a wonderful clarity. The choice suits the role and the opera. And Sierra is a lovely presence on stage.
Surrounding the character of Lucia is a cast of manipulative and self-absorbed men, all thoroughly committed to power and to bending Lucia’s body to their ambitions. The cast is full of appropriately big and vigorous voices. Edgardo Ravenswood, Lucia’s paramour, is sung by Piotr Beczala, who has taken on a number of tenor roles for San Francisco Opera in the past few years. And not surprisingly. With a large, bright and resonant voice, he also has the warmth and confidence on stage that makes the usual romantic hero both charming and appealing. He knows that both Lucia and the audience love him.
Baritone Brian Mulligan got the ever-covetable role of the bad guy, Lucia’s brother Enrico Ashton, who is willing to use her body to redeem his fiscal failures. There’s a bit of Sweeney Todd left over in Mulligan’s portrayal of obsessional passions. But it works. Nicolas Testé got to use his wonderful bass-baritone for the worldly chaplain Raimondo.
The cast was working under the burden of the production, the worst of which were the costumes. They looked like someone had blown up the costume shop and whatever fell to earth was sent to the drycleaners and re-assigned. Lucia was doomed not only to death but to death in a ballroom gown. Among the men were leather jackets, suits and ties, military garb including automatic weapons and a full red plaid suit for the bridegroom.
The sets followed a similar line of postmodern pastiche with traditional sets – monumental and painted – next to rather gorgeous filmic sequences of the Scottish coastline, waves curling darkly and coldly and the sky gray with scudding clouds. The elements were too extreme in combination, not quite achieving the seamless overlaying that made Zambello’s Ring Cycle, for instance, so gripping.
Perhaps the most successful scene was the third-act confrontation between Edgardo and Enrico. Behind a storm cloud–strewn scrim, the two men confront and assure each other how much they long to kill the other. There are no sets, only projections of light: the checkerboard of the floor, a rectangle suggesting a wall. At this point the physical production took on some of the aspects that were embodied in Lucia’s hauntings. It more closely represented the ghosts that otherwise took on a far too substantial presence in white powder and satin.
– Jaime Robles
Lucia di Lammermoor continues at the War Memorial Opera House through October 28. For tickets and information, visit www.sfopera.com.
Photo: Nadine Sierra (Lucia) and Piotr Beczala (Edgardo) in San Francisco Opera’s current production of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor. Photo by Cory Weaver.