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Review: In ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ at the Met, Singing Through Sickness

Albina Shagimuratova and Joseph Calleja star in "Lucia di Lammermoor" at the Metropolitan Opera.Credit...Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times

Whatever glamour and passion there is in the Metropolitan Opera’s blandly efficient revival of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” hovers around Joseph Calleja. Though he was announced at Monday’s performance as recovering from the flu, and had the wear in his tone and coughs to prove it, this invaluable tenor nevertheless sang Edgardo with plangent vigor. The characteristic sob in his throat, dimmed only slightly by his illness, was both affecting and exciting.

But even his stirring presence couldn’t energize this “Lucia,” which suffered most from a flatness at its center. In her first starring role at the Met after two runs as the stratospheric Queen of the Night in “Die Zauberflöte,” the Russian soprano Albina Shagimuratova reached Lucia’s highest notes with crystalline ease.

Her penetrating if monochromatic tone was not the real trouble with her performance, though she struggled to sustain long phrases and to spin out the filament-thin diminuendos that she favored as an effect. More problematic was that neither in her voice nor presence did Ms. Shagimuratova conjure Lucia’s desperation or volatility. Poorly served by the production’s stolid Victorian-style costumes, she came across as a downcast dowager rather than an overwhelmed young woman.

While her coloratura ornamentation was solid, if not spectacular, Ms. Shagimuratova didn’t use it to dramatic purpose. Lucia’s eerie first-act aria, “Regnava nel silenzio,” lacked the necessary extremes: rapt darkness as she describes a ghost sighting and joyous ecstasy as her thoughts turn to her beloved Edgardo. The precipitous runs and piercing high notes of Lucia’s mad scene were here used more for conscientious technical display than as an evocation of mental instability.

The baritone Luca Salsi sounded gruff as Lucia’s vicious brother, Enrico, and the bass Alastair Miles was strained as the well-intentioned chaplain Raimondo. The tenor Matthew Plenk had a bright-toned cameo as Arturo, the husband Lucia murders.

Maurizio Benini conducted a crisp performance that was sometimes brisk to the point of facelessness. Even Mr. Calleja shared this lack of texture, adding few unique touches to his interpretation of Edgardo.

But he alone seemed fully invested in the tension of this ultimate Romantic tragedy, and capable of exploring that tension through the musical line. Just as the last time he sang this role at the Met, in 2011, it seemed only appropriate that the opera ends not with Lucia’s madness but with Edgardo’s mournful tomb scene. Even when he’s ill, climaxes migrate to Mr. Calleja.

“Lucia di Lammermoor” continues through April 10 at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; 212-362-6000, metopera.org.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Battle With Love, Madness and the Flu. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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