Nadine Sierra in one of the films that Simon Stone created for his production of Lucia di Lammermoor (from the Metropolitan Opera Web page for the production being discussed)
Yesterday afternoon I finally got around to watching my saved recording of the Great Performances at the Met broadcast of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. The performance, which was broadcast at the beginning of last month, presented a new staging by Simon Stone. In his native Australia he has been productive directing both theater and film, and the first thing one realizes is that both of these talents were on display at the Metropolitan Opera. Indeed, the two were so closely intertwined that this may well have been the most challenging undertaking by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) production team. The good news is that the team rose to the challenge, providing a thoroughly engrossing account of Stone’s staging.
Mind you, that staging had a ring of familiarity. However, that did not involve familiarity with either past opera performances or the Walter Scott novel, The Bride of Lammermoor, on which Salvadore Cammarano provided a libretto for Donizetti. Rather, the setting was one of a dirt-poor American town whose industrial past was little more than a faint memory. One could easily believe that Stone was familiar with the Justified television series, which was based in the rural South rather than a midwest state like Ohio but captured the same state of economic depression. Indeed, Stone’s setting was so on the mark that one could almost expect to see Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) lurking in some dark corner. It is also worth noting, as an aside, that the town has a pharmacy with a sign declaring that it is open 24 hours a day. No bonus points are necessary for anyone guessing what the town citizens are buying 24 hours a day (but the name of the product begins with an “f”).
Stone then populated his dark sense of place with a first-rate cast, beginning with soprano Nadine Sierra in the title role. The role of her lover Edgardo was sung by tenor Javier Camarena, while baritone Artur Ruciński portrayed her brother Enrico, who is driven by the bad blood that separates his family from Edgardo’s. Bass Christian Van Horn sang the role of Raimondo, listed in the score as Lucia’s tutor but presented in this production as the town priest.
Between the familial bitterness and the bleak setting, there is more than enough to draw the audience into every dark corner of the narrative. However, because this is bel canto, Donizetti’s focus was on the title role, which he endowed with any number of stunning moments. Sierra rose to the challenges of each of them as if she had known every note since childhood. Her chemistry with conductor Riccardo Frizza was consistently right on the money. Furthermore, over the course of the opera, she engaged impeccably with two different solo instruments in the orchestra pit, a harp (Mariko Anraku) in the first act and, in the “mad scene” at the opera’s climax, a glass harmonica (Friedrich Heinrich Kern). (During the bows, I was delighted to see Sierra walk to the edge of the pit to acknowledge Kern.)
The biggest potential problem with bel canto is that the performance is all about the “pretty voice” with little attention to the narrative. Stone found just the right sweet spot to provide a “level playing field” for both vocal talent and compelling narrative. Opera companies deserve more stage directors with such a skill set.
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