Lucie de Lammermoor

Last Thursday I went to see Lucie de Lammermoor (not Lucia de Lammermoor-more on that later) at the Cincinnati Opera. This time, my mom and I succeeded in bringing two more people with us: one of my brothers and a friend who was visiting us from Georgia. My youngest brother still wouldn’t join us because of the “too sad” hang-up. 

Admittedly, Lucie is a super sad opera. The heroine (Lucie) dies of opera disease (broken heart maybe?). The hero (Edgard) kills himself. And Lucie kills her husband of a couple hours, Arthur. Talk about dysfunctional relationships. Lucie’s bad-guy brother (Henri) and his henchman, Gilbert, are the only ones left to tell the tale.

 Yeah, it’s sad.

 But forgetting the sad stuff, the opera was amazing. Here are some highlights: 

• Sarah Coburn, who played Lucie. She is, by far, the most enjoyable soprano I’ve ever seen in an opera. She has not only a great voice, but is a great actor as well. She sang at the Cincinnati Opera in 2006, and the folks there liked her so much, they asked her what opera she want to do. She said “Lucie” (as opposed to Lucia), so Lucie they did. She collaborated with the conductor, Jean-Marie Zeitouni, and principle flutist, Randolph Bowman, to create a new cadenza for the mad scene. It was beautiful—and scarily high.
• The other members of the cast were very good as well, although Sarah Coburn, as the title character, certainly stole the show:

                 Jeremy Cady as Gilbert

                 Gaétan Laperrière as Henri

                 John McVeigh as Arthur

                 Mark T. Panuccio as Edgard

                 Alain Coulombe as Raymond

• Colors. Excepting a gold dress worn by Lucie, the only colors on stage were red, white/off-white, and black. This simplicity made the action pop.
• Set. Inky black panels along the sides and back of the stage (and, occasionally, in the middle). The panels were printed (or painted?) with clouds. The uneven floor (black ramps) allowed for a great range of motion and height without being distracting.
• Dancing. In a parallel to Lucie and Edgard’s fatally doomed relationship, Kristi Capps and Selahattin Erkan played a doe and buck wary of the hunters but eventually killed. Pretty cool.

 Not sure how I feel about the: 

• Lighting. Mostly it was very good (I love how the cloud images on the set changed with the light), but the red lights against the red dresses of the female chorus members made them look like they were in a cheap restaurant. Or, a red light district. Also, the suspended lights at the wedding celebration were a bit weird.
• Flower petals. At first, they were cool: falling from the sky on Lucy, they looked like so many butterflies. But when Edgard stabbed himself and the red petals spilled out, I heard a number of chuckles from people around me. It looked somewhat ludicrous.  

 Lowlights:

• The headgear on the female chorus members. It made them look like they were in the middle of chemo and had no hair.
• The short fight scene during the wedding party. In one word: lame. In two words: really lame.
• The balance between singers and orchestra was frequently not balanced.

 About the Lucie vs. Lucia thing: When Donizetti wrote Lucia in 1835, it premiered in Naples in, duh, Italian. This Italian version is the one usually heard and includes a maid for Lucia (Alisa) as well as a greater role for Raymond (Raimondo in Lucia). Donizetti wanted to make a splash with the Parisian audience and crafted the translation to suit them. The huntsman Normanno of Lucia becomes uber-double-crosser Gilbert (who, incidentally, is really the only comic-relief of the opera). Also Lucie loses the moral support found in Alisa and Raymond. Poor Lucie.

Poor Lucie aside, it was a wonderful performance. And Sarah Coburn’s singing rocks.