Lucia di Lammermoor, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, March 19 2011

The theater was not quite as full as I had expected. I allowed plenty of time to get my favorite seat, but excellent seats were still available an hour before start time. A number of “regulars” were not there. Was something else going on?

The production looked familiar, though I thought I had missed the previous presentation. Act I began “in the Scottish moors,” mounds of earth punctuated by trails and rocks, with trees silhouetted against the background. The camera focused on the left half of the stage, which became apparent only when the black curtain obscuring the right half of the stage was raised to reveal the fountain in which the body of a murdered woman still rests. In an interesting bit of direction, a “ghost,” portrayed by a super dressed in a white gown and with white makeup, appeared from behind a small mound and climbed into the fountain. Act II opened in Enrico’s very dimly lit study. Enrico had a magnificent desk with an elaborate parquet surface; the rest of the furniture was covered with dark gray drop cloths. As scene 1 turned into scene 2, a number of servants came in, removed the drop cloths, uncovered and raised the chandeliers, and revealed a room large enough to hold a wedding with many guests—it was the Met stage, after all. In a slightly anachronistic bit of staging, not to mention a considerable distraction during the famous sextet, the wedding photographer poses most of the principals for the “official” photograph. Our host for the broadcast, Renee Fleming, pointed out that the timing had been moved up to about 1835, which was about the time that the daguerreotype was invented. To the Met’s credit, Act III began with the frequently omitted Wolf’s Crag scene. Here the stage was basically dark. All we could see were the large easy chair on the left side of the stage and the lower steps of what turned into the grand staircase in the next scene. For scene 2, we got the full staircase that made a 180° turn, terminating in a balcony that ran high above the stage from one side to the other. The stage was completely reset, without pause, for scene 3, as the staircase and balcony were pulled away, a wall with a large arch was dropped from above, and a few graveyard monuments were added. During Edgardo’s death scene, Lucia herself appeared as a ghost.

Our cast:
Lucia: Natalie Dessay
Edgardo: Joseph Calleja
Enrico: Ludovic Tézier
Raimundo: Kwanchul Youn
Arturo: Matthew Plenk
Alisa: Theodara Hanslowe
Normanno: Philip Webb
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Production: Mary Zimmerman

Ludovic Tézier was our first hint that we were in for something special. His Act I Cruda, funesta smania was sung with tremendous authority and malevolence. I would love to see him as Scarpia. Natalie Dessay’s Lucia was everything it ought to be. Kwanchul Youn's Raimundo was impressive, and his stage presence conveyed the gravitas of his role as chaplain. Arturo, the husband that Enrico has chosen for his sister Lucia, often comes across as fairly wimpy, but Matthew Plenk made him fairly respectable. Overall, a very fine performance, worth somewhere in the middle between beta and alpha.