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"Not since Callas"
Feb. 13th, 2004 11:46 pmYes, indeed, that phrase was rightfully bandied about tonight! We saw the Lyric's production of Lucia di Lammermoor with Natalie Dessay. Eric said at dinner that she was a "Lucia for the ages", and boy was he right! She is this tiny little slip of a thing, with a voice that fills the Opera House, AND with acting chops! Well, we'd seen her a few years ago in Handel's Alcina when she stole the show from Renée Fleming (not an easy task!), but that was as Morgana, a smaller, comic, character role.
Eric had described the mad scene as "uncomfortable", that it was so real, and she inhabited the role so completely, that you felt you were actually watching someone who had just committed a murder and gone mad*. There is a moment in that scene when she stops singing for a moment, and Enrico comes in. When she stopped, the only sound was that of the entire audience letting out its collective breath.
That, of course, is the scene everyone waits for. But she was brilliant from the moment she came on stage. She was an adolescent girl, grief-stricken at her mother's death, passionately in love with her family's enemy, struggling against her brother's ambitions. She was on edge from the beginning, making her descent into madness absolutely credible. And her voice never faltered or hestitated; it was always pure and certain.
This was Dessay's first Lucia in Italian; while she's sung the role before, she has always done it in French.
Oh, yes, there was a tenor (actually a couple). Edgardo was Marcelo Álvarez, and he really was excellent. Good voice, and, after the first act where for some reason the director didn't let him act with Dessay, good acting as well. But, poor man, he has to spend a good fifteen minutes singing, and doing a death scene, right after the mad scene! What was Donizetti thinking?
*Aside: he said this to me and Jamie before the others arrived. We thought it a bit funny, because, of course, we have both dealt with people who have just committed murder and were mad! So, we said, nothing new to us!
Eric had described the mad scene as "uncomfortable", that it was so real, and she inhabited the role so completely, that you felt you were actually watching someone who had just committed a murder and gone mad*. There is a moment in that scene when she stops singing for a moment, and Enrico comes in. When she stopped, the only sound was that of the entire audience letting out its collective breath.
That, of course, is the scene everyone waits for. But she was brilliant from the moment she came on stage. She was an adolescent girl, grief-stricken at her mother's death, passionately in love with her family's enemy, struggling against her brother's ambitions. She was on edge from the beginning, making her descent into madness absolutely credible. And her voice never faltered or hestitated; it was always pure and certain.
This was Dessay's first Lucia in Italian; while she's sung the role before, she has always done it in French.
Oh, yes, there was a tenor (actually a couple). Edgardo was Marcelo Álvarez, and he really was excellent. Good voice, and, after the first act where for some reason the director didn't let him act with Dessay, good acting as well. But, poor man, he has to spend a good fifteen minutes singing, and doing a death scene, right after the mad scene! What was Donizetti thinking?
*Aside: he said this to me and Jamie before the others arrived. We thought it a bit funny, because, of course, we have both dealt with people who have just committed murder and were mad! So, we said, nothing new to us!
