The direction explicitly heightens the opera’s central themes of escape and violence. Javier CamarenaPHOTO: MARTY SOHL/THE METROPOLITAN OPERA We can watch Lucia climbing out her bedroom window to join her lover Edgardo (Javier Camarena) in the mini mart where he is a cashier while Enrico plots in his downstairs office. Video, some of it filmed in real time by onstage camera operators who follow the characters around, offers still more angles and closeups. Lizzie Clachan’s astonishing set, in which facades and cross-sections of buildings- including a pawn shop, a 24-hour pharmacy, a motel with a neon cross on its roof, and more-are jammed into claustrophobic proximity and viewed from constantly changing angles, evokes the seediness and desperation of the town. Their shared commercial interests aren’t specified-here Enrico seems to run a shady car business-but criminality is implied. Enrico (Artur Ruciński) plans to marry his sister Lucia ( Nadine Sierra ) to Arturo ( Eric Ferring ) to revive the failing family fortunes. Here, the singers, especially the two splendid leads, really seem to be singing for their lives.īased on a novel by Sir Walter Scott, set centuries ago in a world of warring Scottish aristocrats, the story translates neatly to the present. Yet the most startling effect is how profoundly this thoughtful interpretation erases the opera’s Romantic aura and accentuates its universal despair, upending the traditional balance of tragedy elevated through beautiful sounds. Simon Stone’s remarkable new production of Donizetti’s “ Lucia di Lammermoor, ” which opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday, updates the opera to a dying American Rust Belt community in the present day and dubs it “Lucia: Closeups of a Cursed Life.” The show is a feat of technical wizardry, encompassing a turntable that revolves almost constantly-during the action and while set pieces are moved on and off it-as well as a lot of live and pre-recorded video. Nadine SierraPHOTO: MARTY SOHL/THE METROPOLITAN OPERA The Met’s new production of the Donizetti work, by Simon Stone and dubbed ‘Lucia: Closeups of a Cursed Life,’ transports the tragic tale to a dying American Rust Belt community in the present day.
0 kommentar(er)
