"Regnava nel silenzio" (1835)
The heroine's entrance cavatina, telling of a ghost seen by the fountain — the first hint that she is already unstable
Recording: Gaetano Donizetti · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Opera · Italian opera
Lucia di Lammermoor
26 September 1835, Teatro di San Carlo, Naples
Gaetano Donizetti · libretto by Salvadore Cammarano
The defining Italian Romantic tragedy, a dramma tragico in three acts drawn from Walter Scott. In a feuding seventeenth-century Scotland, Lucia is tricked by her brother Enrico into a political marriage with a forged letter proving her lover Edgardo unfaithful. She signs the contract, Edgardo bursts in to curse her, and she murders her bridegroom on the wedding night and goes mad. The scene in which she reappears, bloodstained, before the wedding guests is the archetype of the operatic mad scene.
How to spot them
- ▸Scotland, Ravenswood and Lammermoor: a family feud, a forged letter, a fountain haunted by a ghost, and a wedding that ends in murder
- ▸Voices: Lucia (coloratura soprano), Edgardo (tenor), Enrico (baritone), Raimondo (bass)
- ▸The bride who returns in a bloodstained nightgown, singing in duet with a flute — or, as Donizetti first wrote it, a glass harmonica
- ▸Clue patterns: Walter Scott, Cammarano, San Carlo 1835, the Act II sextet, Emma Bovary in the audience
Arias & moments — listen
"Chi mi frena in tal momento" (the Sextet) (1835)
Six voices freeze the action at the moment the lover returns to find the contract signed
The Mad Scene: "Il dolce suono" (1835)
A bloodstained bride imagines her wedding, accompanied by an instrument that answers her phrase for phrase
Recording: Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848), Salvadore Cammarano (1801-1852), Nellie Melba (1861-1931). · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
"Spargi d'amaro pianto" (1835)
The cabaletta that closes the mad scene, traditionally topped with an interpolated high E flat
Recording: Unknown · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
"Fra poco a me ricovero" (1835)
The tenor's final scene among the tombs of his ancestors, before he stabs himself
"Verranno a te sull'aure" (1835)
The Act I love duet at the fountain, exchanging rings before the exile departs
Quick-fire facts
- •Music by Gaetano Donizetti, libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, in Italian.
- •It premiered at the Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, on 26 September 1835.
- •The source is Walter Scott's novel The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), itself based on a real seventeenth-century Scottish case.
- •Donizetti originally scored the mad scene with a glass harmonica; the part was reassigned to flute before the premiere and only recently restored in some productions.
- •The mad scene's cadenza in duet with the flute is largely a later tradition, associated with Teresa Brambilla and nineteenth-century divas, rather than Donizetti's own writing.
- •The Act II sextet 'Chi mi frena in tal momento' is one of the most famous ensembles in opera and was a staple of early gramophone recording.
- •Flaubert sets a key chapter of Madame Bovary at a performance of the opera in Rouen.
- •Maria Callas's Lucia, especially under Herbert von Karajan in Berlin in 1955, is usually credited with restoring the bel canto repertory to serious critical standing.
- •A French version, Lucie de Lammermoor, was prepared by Donizetti for Paris in 1839 with significant changes.
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online) — Lucia di Lammermoor Premiere, the glass harmonica scoring and the French revision
- Gustav Kobbé, rev. the Earl of Harewood and Antony Peattie — The New Kobbé's Opera Book Synopsis, the sextet and the performance tradition of the mad scene