Lucia of Lammermoor by Donizetti, From (2024/2024), Directed by Filippo Sanjust, Conductor Matteo Beltrami, Ivan Repušić, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Donizetti’s tragic opera, arguably his most famous, is based on Sir Walter Scott’s bestselling novel “The Bride of Lammermoor” (1819). Salvadore Cammarano’s libretto is radical in that it ignores the political backstory to the feud between the Ashtons and Ravenwoods, relegating what has gone before to a few oblique references, and also reduces the complex web of relations in the novel to the three-way friction between Enrico Ashton, his sister Lucia and her lover Edgardo. Passions run high in this story: Enrico detests Edgardo - and also Lucia, who is trying to thwart his plans. Then there is Lucia’s love for Edgardo, which is destined to be her downfall and which is rendered masterfully by Donizetti’s score. The coloraturas that express the positive effect that love has on her in Act 1 are used at the opera’s climax to indicate her unhinged state in the Mad Scene. Another scene containing extreme drama and emotion is the sextet in Act 2. Giacomo Puccini had the following to say about it: “We Italians do relationships better than the German composers. We know how to express misery in the major key. Edgardo and Lucia are in such utter despair that it sends Lucia mad and drives Edgardo to suicide – and yet we get mellifluous sugar-plum vocals, even though Lucia is bewailing that she’s ‘been betrayed by heaven and earth! I would weep, if tears did not fail me. Despair eats away at my heart.’ This sextet is considered the most famous melody for opera ensemble ever written – and justifiably so. It is a true masterpiece of polyphony …” Director and set designer Filippo Sanjust’s production is a period piece reflecting the times when the work was composed (1835). A drop scene with a billowing royal-blue curtain and featuring a girl in diaphanous garb harks back to the Romantic era. The sets are reminiscent of reprints of antiquarian books. In stark and gaudy contrast to these are the black robes, red sashes, white collars, plumes and garters of the Scots – providing an appropriate backdrop to a canonical work of Italian bel canto.