The unforgettable story of passion, vengeance, and familial loyalty, in which heartbreaking drama blends seamlessly with breathtaking vocal acrobatics, takes on additional contemporary resonance when Lucia and Eduardo communicate using social media like Facebook. “She moves through that world but feels no connection to it,” Stone explains, “and feels disgusted by the principles and the priorities of those around her.” Lucia’s madness is tied up with her addiction and with the abuse she suffers, and her famed mad scene is augmented by Stone’s unconventional use of video montage: Alongside the main narrative unfolding on stage, video footage displays Lucia’s subjective experiences, helping the audience follow her psychological journey.
In this decaying environment, Donizetti’s Lucia emerges as a lost outsider. Simon Stone’s new production for the Met transposes Scott’s story to the contemporary American Rust Belt, where the economic struggles of the working class are deepened by drug addiction, misogyny, and patriarchal abuse. Emotionally raw and irresistibly morbid, the story soon made its way across Europe a Danish musical based on the novel even featured a libretto by Hans Christian Andersen! Yet it was Gaetano Donizetti and Salvadore Cammarano-two of Italy’s brightest operatic stars-who in 1835 gave Lucia her immortal voice. Loosely based on a real-life murder that scandalized 17th-century Scotland, Scott’s novel was grisly, gory, and one of the most popular books of its day. In 1819, Sir Walter Scott published a novel about an ill-fated maid from the Lammermoor hills.
Murder, madness, and a blood-spattered bride: For more than 200 years, the spine-tingling story of Lucia di Lammermoor has left audiences shivering with delight.
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