Translated into English by Amanda Holden, with a tale drawn from Sir Walter Scott’s Bride of Lammermoor, the Italian composer Donizetti’s eponymous Lucia, premiered at Naples in 1835, is a somewhat bi-polar amalgam of Highland rivalry and Sicilian braggadocio. Even by operatic standards, the storyline is so deliciously melodramatic that its passionate crises approach hyperbole in ardour.
      Director David Alden’s production is only two years old, and distinguished by its exhilarating - if left-field - intensity. A grisaille-bathed stage and wardrobe (the Victorians’ mourning palette) convey a threatening, threadbare desolation, all too redolent of fading, fin-de-siecle excess. Such an uneasy scenario is apposite, viewed in toto. Fair Scot, the keening Lucia – doomed to a dynastic marriage for sibling honour and profit – meanders through her estranged home, akin to a gothic Alice in Wonderland. Closer inspection reveals a surfeit of incidental allusions in the presentation. Costume Designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel and Set Designer, Charles Edwards’ mood-boards are distinctly catholic, inadvertently referencing Amish, by way of Gustavian decor; Henry James’ Turn of the Screw, and a Young Victoria – not to mention some distinctly twentieth-century radiators in Act I. This schizophrenic aesthetic curiously complements the heroine’s descent into madness. However, historians should allow a liberal pinch of salt.
      Personally, the only visual trope to which I took exception, involved portraying the opera’s putative bride in children’s clothes. Scott’s Lucy (Lucia) was 17 years of age: thus, even infantilised by the unhealthy affections of her brother Enrico, she would not have been running around in lacy drawers and abbreviated crinolines; let alone playing with toys. Soprano Anna Christy, herself a slip of a thing, appears disturbingly doll-like on the eve of her marriage bed. Enrico’s implied incestuous longings for his sister, render this representation more discomfiting still.
      Anna Christy made her debut in Alden’s inaugural 2008 production of Lucia. Avowedly comfortable with the genre’s individualistic bel canto style, the performer has presence and grace, but to my mind, her voice has not fully matured and lacks complexity. Despite this, she assays duets with equanimity, superseding any tendency to shrillness in sweet counterpoint.
      In opposition, Brian Mulligan’s Enrico musters the requisite angst of an unsympathetic character, conflicted by pain and longing, however despicable. His nemesis Edgardo, (Barry Banks) reminds one of a lesser-statured Bryn Terfel - wild of hair, and short of kilt. Uncomely he might be, but the night is his: mournful longing for lost love Lucia is expressed superbly in the Third Act’s graveyard scene, moving a sedate audience to rapturous applause. Clive Bailey’s rich commentary of events as all-seeing Chaplain Raimondo is also commendably forceful. To their credit, the performers utilise Donizetti’s original and higher keys, many of which were lowered in later editions of the score. The recipient of the first Sir Charles Mackerras Conducting Award, Antony Walker, makes an assured Company debut in this context. Under his direction, an accomplished harpist plucks at our heart-strings in Act I.
      David Alden’s spine-chilling Lucia di Lammermoor is a thrill as well as a challenge for aficionados: it may not be the greatest opera ever written, but like the curate’s egg, it is very good in parts.
Caroline Kellett Fraysse