Karin Bergs
Lucia di Lammermoor is a very beautiful opera – and yet it didn’t work entirely without weapons. But at least the singers tried not to turn their weapons on the audience. I once complained and asked whether the opera received money for accustoming the audience to weapons being aimed at the audience – of course I didn’t get an answer.
Plot
The first scene was a little girl, about 10 years old, with a gun in her hand. However, the child said nothing and simply walked off the stage.
Lucia di Lammermoor is the classic Romeo and Juliet story, but in a Scottish setting. Two lovers are not allowed, for reasons that lie in the family history. Lucia has to marry the man assigned to her and on her wedding night she shoots him. She then goes crazy, dies and her lover Edgardo kills himself after he finds out that Lucia is dead. In other words, after the break, Lucia and Edgardo died for an hour – a love story to melt away.
Stage design
The stage design and wardrobe were exciting. Lucia and the choir ladies wore outfits like Jackie Kennedy – in the style of the 1960s. The choir ladies had my favorite hairstyle, the teased outer roll, which unfortunately doesn’t work at all with my hair. Lucia’s lover, Edgardo was probably supposed to indicate a similarity to James Dean -> leather jacket, white T-shirt, but no jeans. He came with an open white Cadillac (or something similar), so there was a car on stage! Oh, and almost all of the men wore suits with ties and glasses. At the wedding the company danced Twist, not acrobatically of course, it was just the choir, not a ballet. To really bring the whole thing back to the 1960s, people drank whiskey -> whiskey, at least according to the bottles – and smoked it. The dead or dying Lucia was carried away by a singer. What these singers have to do! Good thing Lucia wasn’t a 100kg lady.
All in all: a wonderful evening.
