Review: LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, Royal Opera House

Love and mortality are usually two sides of the same coin in opera. Except it doesn’t matter what way the coin lands when you flip it. Both go hand in hand especially in Katie Mitchell’s formidably bleak take on Lucia Di Lammermoor, now revived at Covent Garden for a third time. Subtly skewering any romantic conceit that Donizetti may have conjured, her contemporary focus orientates the story around Lucia’s female suffering to devastating effect.

Although this country doesn’t really do ‘auteurs’ like they do on the continent, Mitchell is one of the few that can be confidently said to fly the flag for strong handed and often radical directorial grip on her productions. Here the vision is initially more subtle: She splits the stage into two halves. Intrigued we watch the action confined to one half, leaving the other often devoid of life. In Act 2 it’s Lucia’s empty closet on one side where she melancholically prepares for her doomed wedding, the banquet hall on the other side bursting at the seams with Hogarthian excess.

Soon the nerve-jangling impact materialises; Lucia’s loneliness as a woman coaxed into a loveless marriage echoes with omnipresent sting. It’s not unfaithful to Donizetti, nor does it hijack his music’s rich texture, brought into full Technicolor by Italian conductor Giacomo Sagripanti. But it does lend it an iciness that could easily fly under the radar.

Later Lucia suffers a miscarriage that unravels in full blood-stained detail, heavily implied to be the cause of her gut-wrenching ‘mad scene.’ It’s unflinchingly brutal. How astonishing to watch a 19th century opera have such a fresh contemporary and icy resonance. Her pain is reclaimed from any semblance of heightened Gothic romance, anchored by the heavy weight of her trauma.

This isn’t even to mention Nadine Sierra’s mesmerising turn as Lucia. Smooth and buttery at first, wafted up high by the promise of Edgardo’s eternal love, she little by little conjures lustrous power as Lucia descends into her psychological torment. Soon it’s overwhelming and she commands every inch of the room with her agony.

Forced to marry by her calculating brother Enrico, Xabier Anduaga’s Edgardo returns on her wedding day, his tenor punchy and emotionally potent. Artur Ruciński’s Enrico is devilishly threatening plodding around in 19th century garb with vampiric menace without sliding into caricature. But the night unquestioningly belongs to Sierra. A spine-tingling performance for a spine-tingling revival.

Lucia Di Lammermoor plays at the Royal Opera House until 18 May

Photo Credits: Camilla Greenwell

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