Gaetano Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor (1835)

What, giving up on Wagner? Of course not. I just had a limited amount of time, so I wanted a shortish opera that I could watch in its entirety. And that turned out to be this.

So we're in Scotland, with a decaying noble family. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, it's necessary that Lucia marry some guy who's going to help the family to rekindle its fortunes. But she's in love with Edgardo who, double bummer, happens to be an enemy of the family. They pledge their troth to one another, but her brother Enrico has a letter forged indicating that Edgardo has taken up with another woman, with very conspicuously non-hilarious results. The plot's basically fine, although I will note that if certain characters had behaved like rational adults and talked things out rather than instantly leaping to conclusions, this whole tragedy could easily have been averted.  In that sense, it's like a hacky sitcom episode with a higher body count.

...however, rationality winning out would have been a shame, as Donizetti dishes out a whole bunch of bel canto goodness. It's really just one great aria or duet after another. I saw this production, and it was great. Ludovic Tézier is notable as Enrico, who is more multilayered than many an operatic villain, with comprehensible motives and no actual malevolent intent towards his sister. Joseph Calleja is fine as Edgardo, but let's face it, the highlight here was never not going to be Natalie Dessay in the title role. The New York Times review which I'm not going to link to DID NOT LIKE her, but seriously, I will challenge that guy to a fistfight in the parking lot. This was the first I'd seen her in a tragic opera, and she is sensational. Introducing the production, Renée Fleming declares that this features the most famous mad scene in opera. Thinking about it, I realize I haven't actually seen very many mad scenes in operas, but it is one hell of a thing, and Dessay kills it. Boom.

As you may know, this is based on a Walter Scott novel. Now, in the opera, Edgaro commits suicide at the end, which...turns out to be an embellishment of the novel, in which--per the wikipedia page-- "Edgar reappears at Lucy's funeral. Lucy's older brother, blaming him for her death, insists that they meet in a duel. Edgar, in despair, reluctantly agrees. But on the way to the meeting, Edgar falls into quicksand and dies." This made me laugh immoderately, but it almost seemed too good to be true: are we sure this isn't just the result of a successful wikipedia vandal? But nope, looking at the end of the book on Project Gutenberg, that certainly seems to be the way of it. WELL DONE, WALLY. You truly earned your position as Most Popular Anglophone Writer of Your Time, and Possibly Ever.