After spending a busy day running around Liberty Village from one meeting to the next I found myself riding the rocket on King Street bound for the heart of the city. It was 6:30pm and all I had found time to feast on that day was a coffee and salad adorned with candied almonds, figs and chevre. I was a bit concerned about heading to the Four Seasons Centre on an empty stomach but was racing to catch up to my busy schedule.
I met Melly at 7pm and took a few shots of her outside of the building before prancing into the lobby. This would be her third opera (and at the end of the night, her favourite to boot). The signs of Spring were in the air. The sun shot through floor to ceiling windows overlooking University Avenue as we marched to our seats.
Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) is one of the great early-Romantic operas and, like the Sir Walter Scott novel The Bride of Lammermoor on which it is based, focuses on the prevailing fascinations of its time. Europe had been rocked by the Napoleonic wars and all the surety of the Baroque and rococo was ruined. The arts and science became fixated on the extremes of humanity, from polarities of emotion to the new energies of electricity, to creating life from death.
In this production, the claustrophobic gloom of the Scottish Victorian house permeates. Throughout the show I was most moved by the power of light. Simple scenes featuring shadow contrasted with bright really proved the power a perfectly lit scene can create. As if rifting through a series of vintage photographs. The show clocked in just shy of 3 hours and featured mind blowing operatic performance by Anna Christy who plays our lead, Lucia. Melly and I would glance over at ourselves in the dark throughout the show, clearly in love with the little pixy on stage who just belted it.
The crowd was clearly wowed. The room was bursting with praise, I think due to a perfect combination of dramatic storytelling, well executed direction and songstress talent. Lucia di Lammermoor includes a fine tuned combination of operatic storytelling: love, deceit, revenge, murder and despair. The most memorable moment can be found in Act 3 when Lucia stumbles on to stage covered in blood. Reminiscent of Sisssy Spacek in the iconic camp horror Carrie our tragic conclusion that evening shed a light on how humanities passion for love can often lead us towards a much darker path.
I don’t know who you are and what qualifications you have to review opera. You seem to be a starry eyed ‘appreciator’ which is OK and your comments on the directorial concept which is quite original and different, may be correct.
But it’s obvious that you are quite ignorant and insensitive to the musical aspects otherwise how can you overlook the disastrous conducting, the single most important thing in performing an opera. This alone totally ruined the show and even the voice of the name role coloratura soprano did not help. Secondly, the Anglo-Saxon world tries to make this a Scottish opera and thereby incorporate it to their culture that’s sadly lacking in this genre. This is an ITALIAN OPERA and should come through as such as it did for the past 150 years and that is why it is justly famous. I have seen this opera twice done by the COC very capably and enjoyably performed. To me this show is a disaster with stupid stage direction and a questionable concept +
terrible musical direction. I am very disappointed with the COC to allow this to happen.
My opinion differs! Toronto Opera house is simply not world class but you may hope to see some decent performances. Do not expect the world’s best opera singers, you won’t find them here. For that you have to go to the MET in NY, to Paris or to London or Berlin.
I went to see Lucia di Lammermoor with my partner and it was decent but very average compared to performances at the MET or in London. The leading opera singers were excellent but suffered terribly from the most awful production and terrible direction. This is such a shame as t the whole thing could have been quite brilliant had they had benefited from superior direction and a better production. Stephen Costello really shone as Edgardo and really had some brilliant moments. Anna Christy was simply charming and I am sure has a great future ahead of her. The clarity, weightlessness and sweetness of her voice ensured I prefer her to Netrebko any day as Lucia.
The set looked like it had been made on a economic crisis budget, it was all whites and grey cardboard walls, colourless and cold with no life to it. It did not have any touch of the gothic unless you have a very dull imagination and are colour-blind. One was not transported to Scotland at all. In fact the set looked made the place look more like a warehouse in Milton-Keynes. Apparently the Director was aiming to make hints at a sanatorium but this just did not work for me. In fact by doing so he took all the romance and passion out of this opera. He left Scotland and Italy, where Donizetti had imagined this tale of great love, passion, sadness and madness. Instead he took us to an Oshawa air-hangar.
He has forgotten that both the original story by Scott and the adapted libretto by Cammarano, are tales of passion. It is the ardent flame of desire of two illicit lovers, Lucia and Edgardo, which juxtaposes with the rigid structures of Victorian society where women are submitted to patriarchal constraints etc that should make this story beautiful, touching and layered. The Director could have kept some of the cardboard white stuff but he needed at least to bring in a lush forest scene with the wild woods of Scotland in it and some visual displays of passion between Edgardo and Christy because without this there was simply no layering, it was all black and white. This Canadian Director took his antiseptic wipes, sanitising what should have been sexy and drained all the passion out of this tale. This was most noticeable during the love scene which I mention below.
The whole production was odd. Persistently strange acting made the whole thing even more bizarre. Lucia kneeling for many scenes was fine at first but then her walking along on her knees just looked incredibly uncomfortable and added nothing. Perhaps she was supposed to appear even smaller and doll-sized but given her stature is tiny it was just unnecessary.
The singers constantly stuck against walls, hardly made use of body language, their space and emotion was barely detectable because of this strait-jacketed behaviour. Even the scene where Enrico should be raging, he barely moved a muscle except to open a cupboard whilst the chorus flung papers around which seemed out of place. Singers were constantly climbing in and out of windows. Every scene had family portraits in it which the opera singers played with in various ways. Is this a Canadian’s view of Victorian Scotland? The director deciding to have the doll-size Lucia, Anna Christy, play with her dolls might have been passable but Enrico playing with dolls and a toy train was just ridiculous and when he rolled the toy train across the stage and smashed it against the wall, several people snickered in what should have been a serious scene. Added to which scenes where the opera singers writhed around on the floor like worms just making it hard for them to sing was out of place. Yes the Director was perhaps making allusions to the Victorian asylum but he got so carried away with that thought there was no room for anything else.
The scene between Edgardo and Lucia which is supposed to be set outside in romantic Scottish woods by a fountain was ruined again by being set in Lucia’s grey and white cardboard cut out bedroom. Edgardo and Lucia barely touched in and spent most of the scene metres apart in fact it was next to impossible to believe they were lovers. Such a shame as Anna Christy has a beautiful coloratura soprano voice, not powerful, but charmingly delicate and very pure which suited the role to perfection. She is no Natalie Dessay but with time she is still young and could reach great heights. Again I found her much better than Netrebko in terms of her voice and suitability in the role.
Edgardo, Stephen Costello, was the strongest opera singer of anyone and outshone the whole cast. He sang splendidly and again it was such a shame that the whole cast was let down by a boring and odd production and bad acting direction.
Ashton, Brian Mulligan, sang well. He had some great moments. Raimondo and Normanno were below par in my opinion.
Arturo dressed in a hilarious white suit and decked out to be very fat was comical and bought some laughs although this is not usually prescribed, it finally bought some relief to an otherwise very monochromatic production.
Lucia’s mad scene was the only scene I could describe as well-contrived in terms of direction, visually-appealing and captivating although sadly perhaps this being the last performance, Christy sang quite well technically but there was not enough passion in her voice. It was hard from listening to her voice to convince oneself that she was going completely insane. Luckily large amounts of blood and a blood-spattered Arturo gave us the message.The Director should have pushed her or perhaps made her go to lunatic asylums to get a feel for the depths of insanity! However thank goodness for Christy’s beautiful sweet tones which made up for poor costumes, set , direction.
Overall I would say this Opera was a mixed bundle. A brilliant performance from Stephen Costello. Anna Christy was absolutely charming as Lucia. Brian Mulligan had some wonderful moments as Ashton but what a shame about the poor production and stifled acting.
I would be happy to watch these opera singers again but in a production fitting for their talent as they have tremendous potential. I won’t go to see anything directed by David Alden again!