The set then begins to revolve and introduces us to Enrico, Lucia’s brother, Normanno, the guardsman and Raimondo, the chaplain. Saved by her soon-to-be verboten lover, Edgardo, he and Lucia display their love with a premature kiss. The performance starts with Lucia held at knifepoint by an intruder. Nothing that exciting but I must commend the detail in which each set displayed. The strong regality in the original production was traded in for a family-run business for modern-day Lucia. The set itself resembled a suburban town: blue wooden house, a mart, a pharmacy, a drive-in, a motel and a water tower. Newly appointed resident conductor Lina González-Granados kept us grounded in the 1880s, implementing Donizetti’s verve through the orchestra. My eyes and ears seemed to be in two different centuries that night. The purpose of the screen was to provide multiple perspectives but having a camera on stage dissolved the authenticity of a stage performance. It seems like no matter how much we modernize opera or integrate current technology or culture into it, everything is met with a whine disguised as a concealed sigh. The audience looked like they were seeing the hand of God come down, awaiting with curiosity and disbelief - as was I. In this case, a projector screen came down and what we thought was an opera premiere was now a film premiere.
In any stage performance, curtains open to the theatrical set. There was no trace of Donizetti’s timeliness in this rendition. The bel-canto opera, meaning extremely dramatic and easy to follow, revolves around a forbidden love that is doomed to end by external pressures, an arra nged marriage and volitional death. “Lucia di Lammermoor” was composed by Gaetano Donizetti and written by librettist Salvadore Cammarano in 1835. LA Opera commenced their season with the premiere of “Lucia di Lammermoor” on September 17.