Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

This gem of a bel canto opera takes its story from a novel by Sir Walter Scott. When I broadcast it on Sunday, June 8, 2008 you heard this well known work by Gaetano Donizetti in its French language version, titled Lucie de Lammermoor. Originally produced in Naples in 1835, the opera reached Paris in 1837. French soprano Natalie Dessay starred in the title role in a 2002 Virgin Classics CD release of the staged revival of the French version by Opera of Lyon. Madame Dessay sang Lucia again in Italian language in the concert hall of the Mariinsky Theatre of St. Petersburg, Russia in 2010, with Valery Gergiev conducting. The Mariinsky CDs I broadcast on Sunday, May 13, 2012.

Now you get to hear another notable soprano of our time, the German Diana Damrau as Lucia, again in a concert production of the work recorded live in performance in 2013. Jesus Lopez-Cobos conducted the orchestra and chorus of the Munich Opera. You listeners may remember Damrau's interpretations of the songs of Richard Strauss for Virgin Classics broadcast on Sunday, June 10, 2012. She recorded Lucia for Erato/Warner Classics with the Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja cast opposite her in the role of the Scottish nobleman Sir Edgardo Ravenswood. This recording restores the long cadenza with flute obbligato to Lucia's famous mad scene. (Ironically, this most famous passage from the opera was not composed by Donizetti!) Also restored to the mad scene is the part Donizetti did write for the spooky-sounding tones of the glass harmonica. Lucia di Lammermoor was the one specimen opera of the Italian bel canto era to remain within the international repertoire right through the succeeding half-century period of the verismo style.