Opera Review: Lucia di Lammermoor

5 / 5 stars
Lucia di Lammermoor

After a distinctly dodgy production of Richard Strauss’s Salome and a less than convincing stab at Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, the English National Opera have hit pure gold in their third outing of the season with a stunning revival of David Alden’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor, which was last seen here in 2010.

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Sarah Tynan and Michael Colvin in Lucia di Lammermoor (Image: NC)

Renowned for its powerful “mad scene” for soprano in the third act, Lucia has long been seen by some as Donizetti’s finest work, but until now I had not realised quite how good it can be.

The plot is based on Walter Scott’s historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor which tells the sad tale of Lucia whose Scottish nobleman brother forces her into a marriage for political reasons with a brutish fellow when she loves someone else.

She stabs her new husband on the wedding night. In the book, he recovers; in the opera he dies; but in both versions, she goes mad and dies.

David Alden’s production introduces a good deal of humour into the first half, particularly in the roles of the ranting chaplain Bidebent, played with an appropriate swagger by Clive Bayley, and Lucia’s outrageous bridegroom Bucklaw, played by Michael Colvin, but even those fine performances are surpassed by the main characters.

Lester Lynch is gloriously domineering as Lucia’s brother, and Eleazar Rodriguez brings a splendid tenor voice to the part of her lover Edgardo, but it is Sarah Tynan in the hugely demanding title role who steals the show.

Rarely have I heard the audience at the Coliseum stunned into such total silence for so long as during her mad scene.

One of the problems faced by any staging of Lucia is that this aria ought to be accompanied by a glass harmonica, a very rare instrument originally invented by Benjamin Franklin.

The glass harmonica is played by stroking glass with the fingertips, which produces that wonderful eerie sound with which it is so easy to annoy fellow dinner guests when the wine glasses are of sufficiently high quality.

Sarah Tynan and Lester Lynch

Sarah Tynan and Lester Lynch (Image: NC)

Eleazar Rodríguez and Sarah Tynan

Eleazar Rodríguez and Sarah Tynan (Image: NC)

But glass harmonicas are hard to come by, and accomplished glass harmonica players even more so.

On this occasion, the ENO has secured the services of glass harmonica virtuoso Philip Marguerre, who accompanies Sarah Tynan in her big aria by stroking his glasses to magnificent effect.

If there is music in heaven, this is surely what it must sound like. There is certainly nothing to match it on earth.

I still have a few reservations about the opera itself and the ENO production: the opera is slow to get going and the first half is a bit dull; Amanda Holden’s translation is also rather uneven, totally brilliant at time, but rather clunky and not quite fitting the music at others, but the superb mad scene renders any such criticism trivial.

This is a great performance of a great opera.

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