I stopped doing full reviews of operas as I found them quite exhausting. But, I've let this blog lie fallow for months, and I felt like I did have a few things to say about the performance yesterday afternoon at Madison Opera. I won't do a big review, though, just point out a few things I liked or disliked.
Lucia di Lammermoor hs long been a favorite of mine. The story is based off Sir Walter Scott's gothic romance The Bride of the Lammermoor, which was in turn based on a real-like incident from the Seventeenth Century: Janet, daughter of James Dalrymple, Viscount of Stair, was bullied by her overbearing mother into breaking off her engagement to Lord Rutherford and marrying Lord Dunbar. Disaster struck on the wedding night, and while no one's quite sure what happened, the most well-known theory is that Janet stabbed her husband and died insane two weeks later.
This was my second time seeing it live. Unlike the one in 2008, only one guy was wearing a kilt (Normanno), and the setting was updated to the 1880s.
I had not seen Ms. Jeni Hauser in fifteen years. Last time I saw her was Spring of 2007 when she was student teacher for my Sophomore Year choir class at Sun Prairie High School. I'd heard her over the radio in a recorded performance as the doll in Le Contes d'Hoffmann back in 2017, but it's not the same thing. So it was lovely seeing her again, if only from the nosebleed section.
The Mad Scene is the big reason I love this opera, and Ms. Hauser did not disappoint. She came into the room in a bloody nightgown and a knife in her hand (which the understandably freaked-out Normanno had to wrench out of her grip). The director must have been reading or watching Hamlet recently because Lucia did an Ophelia in and started playing with flowers and throwing them around. Ms. Hauser made the singing seem effortless; I still have a beast of a time trying to work the coloratura in some of the pieces I work on.
It's not everyday you hear someone praise a single member of the chorus, but I would like to give a shout-out to my voice instructor, Katie Anderson. Granted, I couldn't tell which one she was until Act 3 (I think she wore a purple dress in Act 2, but I can't swear to it), but it was fun seeing her antics in that Act 3 chorus.
If there is one quibble I have, it's that Normanno started off kind of weak at the very beginning. I could barely hear his high note in the opening chorus. He got better after that, but it was still annoying. I'm used to hearing Normanno loud and clear when he and some guards are searching the premises for Edgardo.
Thankfully, my boyfriend wasn't shaken by this one as he was by Carmen and Rusalka.
