LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR
LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, Opera Australia at the Sydney Opera House, 28 September-2 November; Melbourne from 19 November 2012. Photos by Branco Gaica: Emma Matthews and Giorgio Caoduro. Right: Matthews and James Valenti.
It is no exaggeration to say that this new production (co-produced with Houston and La Fenice) belongs to and is a personal triumph for Emma Matthews. At the end of an often gut-wrenching three hours, the curtain calls proceed enthusiastically enough until she appears, at which point the audience goes properly beresk. Apparently this has happened after each performance since the opening on September 28. It's an uncommon response for Opera Australia - whose audiences tend towards restraint - but it's a necessary catharsis for those who've witnessed one of the great performances of recent times.
Designed with effective simplicity by Liz Ascroft and lit by Jane Cox, the wuthering heights of Lammermoor are free of crumbling battlements, bogs and swirling mists and tartans. Instead, abstract flats silently rise and fall to make ideas of cloud and chill, gloomy woods and draughty halls. Clothing is equally unfussy and that means the singers can concentrate on what they do best and the audience can simply concentrate. The focus, therefore, is intense.
From the outset it is the characterisation of Lucia that captivates the imagination and propels the action. Emma Matthews has never sung better nor more powerfully, yet her capacity for control and restraint are employed in all the right places. She is also a fine actress and she starts out as a daring, skipping teenager - off to meet her lover in the woods - paying no heed to the dire warnings and fear of her maid Alisa (Teresa La Rocca). Lucia's lightheartedness has a brittle quality however, in her heart of hearts she knows her place and her plight. When her beloved Edgardo, rightful heir to Ravenswood (James Valenti) tells her he must be off to France on state business, she instinctively knows disaster looms.
Her brother Enrico (Giorgio Caoduro) has not only usurped the Ravenswood domain, but also chosen the wrong side in the eternal struggle between England and Scotland. So he needs Lucia to marry Arturo, the Laird of Bucklaw (Andrew Brunsdon), to shore up their political position. She is tricked into believing Edgardo has abandoned her for another and then forced to marry Arturo.
Melodramatic though the plot may be, there is sufficient truth in it - not just historical but contemporary - to chill the observer. Women as chattels - as disregarded, disrespected and despised beings - are much in the news at the moment, in particular the "enough is enough" stance being taken by so many. What happens to Lucia is logical and inevitable - millions of women who live beneath the fundamentalist yoke would recognise it only too easily.
In this production of Gaetano Donizetti's popular tragedy, Lucia's disintegration is horrifying. The "mad scene" is not all over-wrought vocal fireworks, as is so often the case, but rather we watch, mesmerised as her spirit and youth are visibly crushed by misery and despair and the voice soars like an escaping spirit. Yet she has not escaped of course: her blood-sodden, once-virginal night gown strongly suggests rape as well as the murder of Arturo. As she pathetically rubs at the stains her physical pain and outrage are palpable.
And for much of the action of the second half, Lucia is a bloody, white-clad waif surrounded by the imposing black and brown garb of the Chorus. Their implacable faces highlight her loneliness and bewilderment even as the music washes the auditorium in beautiful sound (conductor Christian Badea). The contrasts have rarely been so stark.
As she is finally led away by the hand by Elisa, Lucia walks flat-footed and stiff-legged like a small, bewildered child. Matthews' Lucia is the embodiment of an entirely broken and hopeless creature. It is a heart-rending moment. And it's a heart-rending production, made memorable by a cast of all round excellent singers and the truly exceptional diva at its heart - Emma Matthews.
