Lucia di Lammermoor
"Lucia di Lammermoor" is an Italian opera set in Scotland, in apparent
payback for "Romeo and Juliet", a British drama set in Italy, with the
same plot. And it does strike me as an essentially Italian opera,
not a Scottish one. I am willing to grant that Scots may be just as
passionate, violent, and vengeful as Italians, but it seems to me that
they are less likely than Italians to sing about being passionate, violent,
and vengeful to the face of their enemy while challenging him to a duel.
The setting is at about the time of the death of Henry VIII. For some
reason the Santa Fe Opera decided to make the costumes and accessories
vaguely Edwardian in style. I don't think this works very well. For
one thing, both Scotland and Italy were far too well governed by then
to put up with this sort of shenanigans. For another, it seemed rather
out of character for the wild Scottish chieftain to take off his smoking
jacket and put on a frock coat to go in to dinner.
As in "Romeo and Juliet", the plot is that two young people from feuding
families have fallen in love. The main difference in the plot of "Lucia
di Lammermoor" is that Lucia and Edgardo are old enough to know better.
Romeo and Juliet manage to screw things up mostly by themselves. But
because of their increased maturity Lucia and Edgardo have to have help
screwing things up. This is provided in the person of Lucia's brother
Enrico. Enrico is the current head of one of the two feuding families,
the one currently in the ascendent. But politics are changing, due to
the death of Henry, and to maintain the ascendency over Edgardo's family
he feels he needs to forge a new alliance. This he proposes to do by
marrying Lucia to Arturo, the sion of another prominent family with
currently favorable English connections. Lucia, in love with Edgardo
but afraid to say so, is resisting. Edgardo is sent off to France on
some unspecified diplomatic mission (Scotland at the time was enjoying
a "the enemy of my enemy must be my friend" relationship with France,
anent the English).
Enrico manages to intercept the lovers' correspondence, and eventually
forges a letter purporting to come from Edgardo, which says something
like "Hey babe, it's over. I've found somebody else." After soliquizing
a bit about whether he should forget his dreams of political power and
do what would give everlasting happiness to his sister, Enrico says
"Naaaa" and hands her the letter. Crushed, she consents to marry Arturo.
On Lucia's wedding day, immediately after she has signed the wedding
contract, Edgardo, hieing back from France, bursts in and says "What's
going on here?" He is shown Lucia's signature on the wedding contract,
and totally devastated, storms out, without ever speaking directly to her.
He goes and sits brooding in the ruins of his family castle. Enrico,
furious about the disruption of the wedding seeks him out and challenges
him to a duel at dawn. Edgardo plans to commit suicide by enemy, by losing
the duel, and sets to work digging his own grave.
Lucia is completely unhinged by all this, and when she and Arturo retire
to the bridal chamber, she relieves him of his dagger and stabs him to
the heart. She reappears in the ballroom, covered in gore, for her famous
mad scene. I think the scene is more famous for its spectacular music
than the madness (it has a higher ratio of hallucination to delusion than
I would like, though I'm certainly no expert). Donizetti hit upon the
idea of having everything she said echoed by the solo flute, apparently
feeling that talking to the flute is the musical equivalent of talking
to the wallpaper. The scene calls for her to wander off on her own,
unaccompanied, and to come back and cross with the flute precisely on key,
and similar sorts of vocal fireworks. (For mad, I prefer Lady Macbeth.
But I admit that artistically, the duet with the flute ranks up there with
one of my favorite lines from Shakespeare, the
"No, this my hand shall the multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red."
Which I like so much because of the dramatic effect of switching from
words with latin roots to words with anglo-saxon roots at the end of the
line.)
Lucia proceeds to her death bed, apparently propelled only by psychosis.
Word is brought to Edgardo, just before his dawn appointment. Enrico
also shows, up, too distracted to be very interested in a duel. When
the word of Lucia's death is brought, Edgardo decides to take things
into his own hands, and raising his dagger high, plunges it into his heart.
Forensically the ending is a little weak. People don't die of psychosis
alone (although I suppose a fulminating case of hydrophobia could explain
the whole incident). And a dagger plunged downward at the chest is likely
to bounce off the ribs, leaving only a nasty cut in the skin, or else to
follow the rib cage down to where it can inflict fatal damage on the bowels,
leaving the suicide to die in agony many hours later. But, as in Romeo
and Juliet, the moment calls for dramatic and effective self-immolation,
and who am I to gainsay it.
Return to `reviews' contents