Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” dates from 1835 and usually has been staged with a Romantic or Gothic aesthetic. But
’s lurid, bloody production, seen Sunday, looks and feels like Expressionistic music drama of 70 to 90 years later.
"Lucia di Lammermoor"
Who
: Portland Opera
Continues
: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 6, 8;
Where
: Keller Auditorium, 222 S.W. Clay
Tickets
: from $20; 503-241-1802;
Lucia herself already suggests this when she appears in the prelude, dark with atmospheric horns, to the all-male first scene. High-strung, manic and seemingly on the verge of madness from the start, Elizabeth Futral’s Lucia is relentlessly intense, sometimes to the extent of scenery chewing.
Set elements, jagged like the sides of torn cardboard boxes and often garishly lit, suggest the cliffs and fells of the Scottish highlands. Against them in the central scene, a bright footlight projects the shadows of Lucia, the brother who is forcing her to marry a man she doesn’t love, and the lover who is about to curse her betrayal; as she’s upstage and the men downstage, their huge shadows dwarf her small one.
In Act 3 Scene 1, while brother and lover plan a duel at dawn and defiantly duet, a Lucia double in a red-windowed tower rubs the blood of her murdered bridegroom on the glass, which lessens the impact of Lucia’s entrance in bloody wedding gown in the next scene. When a big life saver of a moon is lowered for the last scene, we have to ask whether all this doesn’t better fit Strauss’s “Salome” (1905) or Berg’s “Wozzeck” (1925).
James Robinson created the physical production for Minnesota Opera in 2001 with designs by Christine Jones (sets), Constance Hoffman (costumes) and Scott Zielinski (lighting). Doug Scholz-Carlson, an assistant to Robinson, directs the Portland staging, and Scott Bolman, an assistant to Zielinski, re-creates the lighting.
Futral’s tremulous singing in her first aria Sunday was worrysome but dramatically apt, for Lucia describes a vision of a ghost that beckons her to a fountain whose water runs red with blood. Futral was secure and moving in Lucia’s duets with her lover Edgardo, her brother Enrico and her tutor Raimondo. She capped the wedding scene with a sovereign high D and the mad scene with a perfect downward run and a high E flat.
The rapturous Lucia-Edgardo duet has three verses – one for her, one for him, one together. After Futral’s intensity, tenor Scott Ramsay was strikingly understated in his verse – a decidedly lyrical approach that he also took in Edgardo’s death scene. Ramsay’s tone thinned up high, and he strained in the wedding-scene curse, where the blocking is no help: Edgardo and Lucia stand on a table upstage, and to face her he has to sing to the side, not to the audience.
Weston Hurt’s pleasant baritone made Enrico seem more humane than usual. A more trenchant quality is called for in Enrico’s Act 1 cabaletta, where he rages that he’ll quench the flames of Lucia’s passion with Edgardo’s blood.
The best solo singing, strong and beautiful, came from bass Peter Volpe as a compassionate Raimondo who seemed to foresee events. When Raimondo sorrowfully reported the murder and madness, Volpe joined with Portland Opera’s outstanding chorus in a scene that was richly sung indeed.
Tenor Carl Halvorson commanded the stage early as Normanno, captain of Enrico’s guard. Mezzo-soprano Melissa Fajardo and tenor Ian José Ramirez, Portland Opera Resident Artists, were solid as Alisa, Lucia’s companion, and Arturo, the ill-fated bridegroom.
The Portland Opera orchestra seems to be improving under music director George Manahan, but it’s not happening quickly. We still hear some wrong notes and, much more often, a raucous, unrefined quality. Manahan and his musicians made the wedding scene exciting. Flautist GeorgeAnne Ries matched Futral well in the mad scene.
-- Mark Mandel