Vienna State Opera (live stream), 24/04/2022

Donizetti : Lucia di Lammermoor

Vienna State Opera Chorus and Orchestra

Evelino Pidò

This Laurent Pelly production opened in Vienna in early 2019, with the same conductor, and the same Enrico, George Petean.  It's a cold affair, literally as well as figuratively, since the first act takes place in a snowscape, at night with a house dimly visible in the background, whose lit windows and reflection in a lake immediately evoke Magritte's Empire des lumières.  Unfortunately, it's also rather screen-unfriendly, with the singers' feet more visible than their faces much of the time.  

The second act keeps the uneven terrain, and occasional fall of snowflakes, but transparent panels suggest interior walls and doors, again in a chill, unwelcoming fashion.  And speaking of fashion, the costumes, all in blacks and greys (save for Lucia's wedding dress), are enveloping, everyone covered up to the neck and down to the wrists, long dresses for the women.  Only Edgardo has a more casual look, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar - and that just looks ridiculous in the first act, amidst the snow!  Only twice does any real colour enter the scene, at the end of Act 1, when the background disappears in a wash of a dark red shade, foreshadowing, unsurprisingly, the Mad Scene, bathed in red.  Just as an indication of how sombre the whole thing generally was, sets and costumes alike, anyone who had a good manicure, whether French polish or clear varnish, immediately stood out, nails gleaming against dark fabrics or walls.

It's very clean, certainly, and perhaps all of it is Lucia's mental mindscape, because from the first she's depicted as fragile, a little infantile, or perhaps just very young and over-sheltered, and very simplistic in her outlook.  It was also, partially, the treatment of the chorus that gave me that impression.  At times - the huntsmen in Act 1, and in the last act once Raimondo arrived, and the mourners in the final scene - their movement was fairly natural, but when they arrived as wedding gusts, funereal in their shades of black, their movements were stiffly choreographed, they were little more than automata, and therefore not real people at all.  

However, it's not a setting, or a presentation that allows for much sympathy for the principal character.  No, that came wholly from Lisette Oropesa herself, from the luminosity of her voice and the ease of her belcanto technique, beautifully clear trills completely integrated into the line, and effortless top Ds or E flats.  The one place where she did not quite deliver was, oddly enough, the Sextet, and that was curiously low-key altogether, nobody really providing the full sweep of melody of that magnificent number.  The Mad Scene, however, accompanied, as originally scored, by the unearthly sound of a glass harmonica, was a triumph, all the ornamentation at the service of the emotion, her touching fragility, and not merely for show.

This is the first time I've seen Benjamin Bernheim perform, though I've been an admirer of his recordings and broadcasts for a few years now.  He's not visually the most expressive interpreter, or at least not in this production, but the voice flows smoothly and elegantly, and meshed very well with Oropesa's.  George Petean began very strongly, but in his duet with Lucia his timbre seemed to fade out in places, which was a bit odd, though he recovered for the duet with Edgardo.  Roberto Tagliavini was a fine, rich-voiced  Raimondo, and Patricia Nolz made a good impression as Alicia.  

The belcanto repertory is not terribly comfortable territory for the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, they're always just on the edge of being a bit too luxurious for this music, but Evelino Pidò made the most of them, and the luscious horn sound was particularly beautiful in Edgardo's final aria.  Pidò's tempi were very well chosen, the momentum never flagged, nor ever seemed rushed.  I felt this was a somewhat heartless production, but musically very strong.

[Next : 26th April]