Met moves Donizetti opera to decaying American town
Call it bel canto in the Rust Belt
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Your support makes all the difference.Call it bel canto in the Rust Belt.
The Metropolitan Operaās new production of āLucia di Lammermoorā plucks the ill-fated heroine out of the Scottish hills where Sir Walter Scott placed her in his 1819 novel and where Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti kept her in his opera 16 years later.
Instead, director Simon Stone has transplanted her to a contemporary American town whose once-prosperous residents are suffering the effects of economic decline and where the pharmacy and pawnshop are among the only thriving businesses.
āIt can feel relaxing to escape and go to a Donizetti opera thatās set in a previous era,ā Stone said in a panel discussion at the opera house during rehearsal. āBut I think itās less of a transformative experience than if you can go, āWow, this is about me, my family, us.'ā
Stone said he looked for an American equivalent to the original setting and settled on the Rust Belt.
āThe novel and opera are about the end of the aristocracy in Scotland, and it became an incredibly poor country very quickly,ā he said in an interview. āI wanted to find a place in America where thereās that same sense that the glory days are over, and if you look at the former industrial towns, thereās a lot of drug use, a lot of unemployment. So you have people who are not just desperate, but their pride is wounded.ā
Lucia is still lied to, emotionally manipulated and bullied by her desperate brother and his henchmen into giving up her sweetheart Edgardo and marrying a man for his money. But in Stoneās version sheās also a recovering drug addict who relapses once her hopes for happiness are crushed.
For soprano Nadine Sierra, the updated setting helps her identify with her character.
āThereās a portion of this Lucia I absolutely get,ā she said in an interview. Growing up in ānot the most glitzyā neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, she recalls being bullied in school and getting into a series of emotionally abusive relationships with men in her early 20s.
āI feel as if Iām playing myself,ā in this production, she said. āHow I would react to the way Lucia has to live her life.ā
Luciaās reaction is, to be sure, extreme by any measure: She kills her new husband on their wedding night ā in this production by striking him with a fire extinguisher in their cheap motel room. (āShe grabbed anything she could,ā Sierra said.)
That act leads to the famous āmad scene,ā an extended showpiece for sopranos notable for the intricate vocal line and elaborate ornamentation that typified the bel canto style of early 19th century Italian opera.
But to Sierra, the term āmad sceneā may be a misnomer.
āI donāt think Lucia is necessarily crazy at the end,ā she said. āI think sheās had enough. Sheās so tired of her whole world collapsing on her. ā¦ She does murder her husband, but you know these things do happen.ā
When Peter Gelb, the Metās general manager, decided on a new production of āLucia,ā he said he thought of Stone because heād been impressed with his work on two theatrical classics, Federico Garcia Lorcaās āYermaā and Euripidesā āMedea.ā
āThe way he approached the tortured female characters at the center of each of those plays,ā Gelb said, āI thought āLuciaā would be an opera that would appeal to him.ā
Sierra said as soon as she found out who her director would be, she got in touch with soprano Pretty Yende, a good friend who had starred in Stoneās production of Verdiās āLa Traviataā in Paris.
āPretty told me it would be a bit more complex, more technological than what weāre used to in bel canto operas,ā Sierra said.
That may have been an understatement. As in his āTraviata,ā Stone makes extensive use of video projections, some pre-recorded and some to be filmed live during performances. These include shots of Lucia painting a portrait in her room (a skill she may have picked up in rehab, Stone said) and dreaming about a life with Edgardo she never gets to enjoy.
āMost of the filming is about trying to get into the inner life of this woman,ā Stone said. āSo much of this opera is about menās opinion of how women should behave, of what she should do.
āIf you donāt get a chance to see her interior life then all you see is a trapped animal,ā he said. āBut she only becomes a trapped animal when sheās around those guys. When sheās on her own, sheās totally autonomous and powerful.ā
Gelb is aware that any drastic reimagining of a beloved classic may meet resistance from some in the audience. But heās confident most people will judge this āLuciaā on its merits.
āI believe the opera public at the Met is more sophisticated theatrically than when I started 16 years ago,ā Gelb said. āAnd they are generally more open to new experiences, providing they make narrative sense and are stimulating both musically and theatrically.ā
Audiences worldwide will be able to judge for themselves when āLuciaā is broadcast to movie theaters live on May 21. The production, which opens April 23, also stars tenor Javier Camarena as Edgardo, and baritone Artur Rucinski as Luciaās brother, Enrico, and will be conducted by Riccardo Frizza.