★★★★☆
No David Alden production is complete without an asylum-sized parade of creeps and pervs. And this 2008 Donizetti production — now revived with melodramatic gusto by English National Opera – is definitely one for connoisseurs of the kinky.
In this staging, poor deranged Lucia (the superb Sarah Tynan) is not only caught in a psychological tug-of-war between the dastardly Arturo (Michael Colvin), the rapacious husband whom she comprehensively kebabs on their wedding night, and her scarcely more appealing boyfriend Edgardo (Eleazar Rodriguez). She is also lusted after, tied up and groped by her own brother Enrico (Lester Lynch), a slobbering hulk with an infantile attachment to her nursery dolls.
Also roaming in this gloaming is the eternally baleful Raimondo, played by Clive Bayley as