Mad, Bad and Dangerous

By Michael Walsh

TITLE: LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR

COMPOSER: GAETANO DONIZETTI

WHERE: THE METROPOLITAN OPERA

THE BOTTOM LINE: The ghosts of Poe and Bram Stoker breathe new life into an old bel canto war-horse.

In a program note to her startling, macabre -- and, on opening night, lustily booed -- new production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera, Francesca Zambello cites as inspiration the gloomy tales of Edgar Allan Poe and the brooding landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, both contemporaries of the composer. Maybe. But those with an eye for contemporary culture -- and the weekly grosses of Francis Ford Coppola's latest film in Variety -- can see that the real influence is one Mr. Zeitgeist. The Bride of Dracula, anybody?

The question of how to refresh opera's inherited visual cliches occupies every thinking director these days, especially when the genre is as terminal as bel canto: a collection of pretty tunes hung on the dusty skeleton of a story. Zambello's solution may be vilified in tartan-loving, canary-fancying quarters: unlike traditional stagings of Lucia, this one includes no kilts, no Scotsmen, no mountain greenery of any kind.

Instead, set designer John Conklin evokes a gray, gloomy, decaying world (much like present-day Britain, in fact) that is literally falling apart. The centerpiece is a crumbling Ravenswood castle -- nevermore! -- that conjures the shades of doomed fictional redoubts from the Gibichungs' hall to Carfax Abbey, replete with scattered coffins, drowning pools and blood-red skies. So powerful are the designs that, probably for the first time in Lucia's history, one leaves humming the scenery.

The undead have stalked opera houses as disparate as San Francisco and Bayreuth, in both cases in Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. But Zambello goes further in her use of pop cultural references, particularly cinematic ones. The expressionistic sets recall Tod Browning's original 1931 film, Dracula (Bela Lugosi would have felt right at home at Ravenswood), while Martin Pakledinaz's costumes evoke David Lynch's sanguinary 1984 intergalactic flop, Dune. In the famous mad scene, Lucia's descent into insanity is symbolized by a steep staircase, down which the white-gowned murderess floats like her Nosferatu namesake, Lucy Westenra, Coppola's hot-pants vamp extraordinaire.

What may have most roused the normally comatose Met audience was the production's feminist subtext. This Lucia is less a helpless damsel in distress than a strong, sexual woman who chooses death before dishonor -- Elektra's first cousin. Although she had some vocal difficulties on opening night (Donizetti's high notes are best not delivered while the soprano is on her knees or flat on her back), reigning bel canto diva June Anderson's forceful stage presence ensures that the heroine gives as good as she gets. Other notables include a promising American tenor, Richard Leech, as Lucia's lover Edgardo, whose still raw but heroically enthusiastic singing portends a major voice; and reliable baritone Juan Pons as Lucia's bad-guy brother Enrico. Marcello Panni conducts with a Scotch snap.

The cast will change throughout the season, both during the current run and again when the production is revived in the spring. What remains is the controversial conception. When Zambello and her production team came on for their opening-night bows, cheers for the plaid-less performers turned to jeers. And yet the director had just done something usually only managed in the movies: she had raised the dead.