Lucia di Lammermoor: Dessay and Calleja @ the Met!

I went to see the Met's well-worn Zimmerman production of Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" live at my local cinema yesterday!  Dessay starred as her last Met Lucia, Calleja as his first Met Edgardo.  What a duo!

Must say, in general, Calleja stole the show.  Truly a voice from the "Golden Age" of tenors...a little too stale and lacking inflection at times, but seriously an incredible voice - in terms of power, raw vocal materials, and dramatic instincts.  There's a genuine passion that really suits the Edgardo temperament.

All Lucia photography Copyright 2011 by Mr. Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera.

Natalie Dessay (my fave soprano!) made a great return to this production of Lucia, with which she opened in 2007 as the first in a trio of Met Lucias.  The 2007 Lucia was recorded for a DVD bit on her Italian Opera Arias disc.  It was insane!  That opening-night performance was hyper, crazy, angry...a very highly-charged Lucia...thrilling and dramatic.

Uhh...yesterday...Dessay sang and acted Lucia limpidly, conveying more fragile despondency than I have ever seen her in anything.  A very delicate and dignified Lucia...but probably the least dramatic I've ever seen Dessay.

Vocally...she tends to get a dry voice these days and gets some cracked notes...and her trills are GONE!!  But she is such an amazing singer...chillingly haunting in "Il dolce suono" and breathtakingly beautiful phrasing in the Act 1 duet.  Splendid colouratura and a superb symbiosis of singing with acting.  She never ceases to amaze me...even if she tends to have more slips as her voice ages.

So I would say that I'm perhaps a little disappointed with Dessay's slightly more sober Lucia...but if I hadn't seen her truly crazy 2007 Met Lucia, I would say otherwise.  The fragility, despair, and complex psychological drama playing out in Lucia's head more pronounced in this 2011 Lucia, and Dessay's new interpretation this time around is more sensitive to the pathos of Lucia and her inward processes...a very different take on this heroine.  Good?  Bad?  Depends on your point of view.

French baritone Ludovic Tézier joins the cast as a sort of indifferent Edgardo.  I love his voice and what he does with it, but his on-stage demeanour is just so BORING.  I much more liked Mariusz Kwiecień in the role...there's more anger and rage...Enrico, to me, is just as hot-headed as Edgardo.  Then again, Ludo has done it so many, many times like Natalie...both in French and Italian!

Tézier showed little emotion throughout, but on the other hand, his indifference and cruel insensitivity to Lucia's plot made it all the more convincing in the big scheme of things.  But as an opera, it destroyed any sense of the animalistic rage and spirit of revenge of the opera which propels it forward.  The Act II duets were nice, and the final scene was great though!  Calleja really tore up the stage, throwing stairs left, right, and centre!

Anyway...another highlight was Raimondo...Korean bass Kwangchul Youn was incredible!  A deep, solid bass voice with an attitude of having a sympathetic "voice of reason".  I was very impressed.  So overall, a pretty amazing cast!  Dessay could have been in slightly finer form vocally and I like her hyper-crazy Lucia better, but I love that she was able to find a completely different interpretation of the same character.

Interesting embellishments...during the pre-mad scene interview with the ever-present Renée Fleming, Nat was saying that she likes the play with the chorus and do some improvising...which she certainly did!  She went nuts with the ornamentation in her solo cadenza and did a whole bunch of unexpected things!  That was a surprise...but still...no hyper-craziness.

And something that really impressed me was that Renée mentioned how Dessay did new ornaments everyday when she did Morgana in Handel's "Alcina"...I did not know that!  That's amazing!  She really went all out in the final cabaletta "Spargi d'amaro pianto" she did some angry finger-pointing and evil-eye glances...very nice touches.  High E-flat was a little short...but what a thrill her high register!  Uglier and more edgy, yes...but so damn thrilling and piercing...then again, her low register is PHENOMENAL now...deep, throaty, and dark.  Was very effective in "Regnava" and in the mad scene too.

I never liked the ending of Lucia with Edgardo blabbering on and on, but Calleja made it work.  Dessay made a return as the ghost and was both girlish and crazy evil!  Overall, nice end to her string of Lucias, but the cast of Tézier+Dessay and their interpretations of the roles which they've sung many, many times already lacked the fire of perhaps Calleja, who still is obviously enjoying the process of discovering the nuances of the role.  Dessay, I felt, was sort of like..."I've wrung this poor Lucia girl dry...time to give her a little break this time around?"

So can we finally saw goodbye to Zimmerman productions at the Met...for a long while?  She hasn't been too popular, with that Sonnambula and all!

Some fun things: Renée Fleming interviewed the Lucia dogs and got lots of love in the process.  Juan Diego Flórez had a blast talking about the threesome bed scene in Rossini's "Le Comte d'Omry" with Damrau and Didonato.

But maybe not such a great thing...IT WASN'T IN HD!!  Our pokey small-town Canadian theatre had such bad video quality!  Disappointing...but a dream cast with some nice new vocal discoveries!

After seeing this opera so many times, I'm sick of it though.  Lucia just doesn't work...with the anti-climactic ending death scene and some pokey moments in Act II, but man Dessay's colouratura skillz in the mad scene and beyond and Calleja's impassioned Edgardo did it justice!

And now we say farewell to that half-a-decade-old blood-stained dress...and perhaps Donizetti too?  Hope Dessay doesn't keep wringing these bel canto ladies to death!  Quite liked her semi-nude Cleopatra for example ;)