Small picture of Donizetti

 

 

 

Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor

Minnesota Opera, Ordway Center, St. Paul's, March 3 - 10, 2012.

Photographs by Michal Daniel, courtesy of Minnesota Opera.

 

Minnesota Opera, who in the past have explored some of the less well known bel canto dramas, such as Mercadante's Orazi e Curiazi,  Rossini's La donna del lago and Donizetti's Maria Padilla as well as his Roberto Devereux and Mary Stuart, decided this time to go for the best known of all, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor in reviving a ten year or so old co-production with New York City Opera.  For the Lucia, Susanna Phillips, this followed closely on her appearance in the same role with the Chicago Lyric Opera and perhaps helped to account why her Minnesota performances particularly impressed.  Jay Furst (PostBulletin.com, March 5, 2012) was very effusive in his praise for her singing while noting an occasional lack of flexibility.  He also saw a similar lack of bel canto technique in the Enrico of James Westman but generally commended his performance as well as the Raimondo of Ben Wager but was altogether less impressed by the Edgardo of Michael Spyres  This time round he found the revival production looking somewhat tired concluding "Presumably the company will roll out a new design next time, hopefully in less than 11 years — that's too long to wait for another 'Lucia', especially with a singer as good as Phillips."   Tatiana Craine (Twin Cities Daily Planet , March 12, 2012) was of much the same mind on Phillips "Her performance as Lucia, bloodied, broken, and utterly mad, literally made this opera", while being rather more generous in her appraisal of Westman and Spyres.

Minnesota Opera's next foray into bel canto will be Donizetti's Anna Bolena, November 10-18, 2012.

 

The Team

 

Lucia - Susanna Phillips / Angela Mortellaro

Edgardo - Michael Spyres / Nathaniel Peake

Enrico - James Westman / Hyung Yun

Raimondo  - Ben Wager / Joseph Beutel

Arturo - A. J. Glueckert

Alisa  - Victoria Vargas

Normanno - John Robert Lindsey

 

 

Conductor  -  Leonardo Vordoni

Stage director - James Robinson

Set designer - Christine Jones

Costume designer - Constance Hoffman

Original lighting designer - Scott Zielinski

Lighting designer - Scott Bolman

 

Raimondo and Normanno

 

 

Enrico and Normanno

 

 

Enrico and Lucia

 

 

Edgardo, Lucia and Arturo

 

 

Lucia

 

 

Edgardo

 

 

 

Page initially published in  2012