We’ve been moving all around Europe recently, and on this week’s Sunday Opera (9/13 3:00 p.m.), we’re returning to Milan for a recent production of Gaetano Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.”
“Lucia” premiered in 1835 when Donizetti was at the height of his career and was the last of the three Italian opera composers who were considered “geniuses” since Rossini had retired from writing operas and Bellini died just before its premiere. It was loosely, very loosely, based on Sir Walter Scott’s Novel, “The Bride of Lammermoor” and centers on the plight of Lucy (Lucia) Ashton who loves a man from the wrong family. This also came at a time when Scotland was in the minds of many Europeans who loved a romanticized idea of the country because of its feuds and tribal wars as well as the mythology and folklore associated with it.
“Lucia” is another version of the star-crossed lovers found in “Romeo and Juliet.”
Lucia (Rosa Feola) is in love with Edgardo (Piero Pretti), but he is a Ravenswood, and they are supposed to be sworn enemies. As a bit of a back story that I don’t believe is in the opera, Lucia’s family was banished from England for backing the deposed Edward VII, and he settled in Scotland. Once there, he took over the ancestral home of the Ravenswoods, pretty much eliminating their family history.
Lucia’s brother, Enrico (Boris Pinkhasovich), is now the Lord of Lammermoor, and he has decided that Lucia will marry another Lord, Arturo (Leonardo Cortellazzi), not knowing that Lucia and Edgardo have promised themselves to each other. With the help of a Calvinist chaplain named Raimondo (Michele Pertusi), Enrico poisons Lucia and Edgard’s relationship, but the ending he hopes for doesn’t occur. Lucia goes mad, kills Arturo, and then dies. Upon hearing this, Edgard kills himself hoping that he will see Lucia once more in heaven.
Rounding out our cast are Hyeonsol Park as Lucia’s maid Alisa and Paolo Antognetti as Normanno, one of Enrico’s retainers.
Our conductor is Speranza Scappucci who is leading the La Scala Orchestra & Chorus.
Afte “Lucia,” we’re turning to more music of Donizetti including a one-act “honorific” opera that didn’t get a recording until 2012.
“Aristea” was written to celebrate the name day of Ferdinand I, the King of the Two Sicilies and was performed around 1823. Although referred to as a cantata because of its minimal required staging, Donizetti was adamant that it was an opera.
The story looks at Aristea (Andrea Lauren Brown) who is placed in the home of a shepherd by her father, Licisco, Prince of Messenia (Cornel Frey), as he escaped the control of the Spartans. The shepherd, Erasto (Robert Sellier), lovingly raises Aristea as “Cloe,” and she marries a nobleman named Filinto (Sara Hershkowitz). Of course, there are trials, confusions, and misunderstandings, but eventually, father and daughter are reunited for a happy ending.
Other members of the cast include Caroline Adler as Corinna, a shepherdess who is also in love with Filinto and Andreas Burkhart as another nobleman, Comone.
Supporting the main cast are Members of the Bavarian State Opera Chorus and the Simon Mayr Chorus and Ensemble conducted by Franz Hauk.
We’ll close our time together with the three ballet movements from another of Donizetti’s lesser-known operas, “Les Martyrs,” which premiered in 1840, was performed roughly 20 times over the next year, and faded into obscurity appearing very infrequently and often as a concert performance.
