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- <text id=92TT2731>
- <title>
- Dec. 07, 1992: Reviews:Music
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Dec. 07, 1992 Can Russia Escape Its Past?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- REVIEWS, Page 72
- MUSIC
- Mad, Bad and Dangerous
- </hdr><body>
- <p>By Michael Walsh
- </p>
- <qt>
- <l>TITLE: LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR</l>
- <l>COMPOSER: Gaetano Donizetti</l>
- <l>WHERE: The Metropolitan Opera</l>
- </qt>
- <p> THE BOTTOM LINE: The ghosts of Poe and Bram Stoker breathe
- new life into an old bel canto war-horse.
- </p>
- <p> 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, Fran cesca
- 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?
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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 con troversial 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.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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