Lucia di Lammermoor

In Donizetti’s *Lucia di Lammermoor* , love, hope, and human relationships are caught in a destructive spiral under the pressure of patriarchal violence. At the center of the story is Lucia, whose brother Enrico must secure the family’s future and therefore forces her to marry the wealthy Lord Arturo. But Lucia loves Edgardo, her brother’s arch-enemy. When Enrico learns of this, he sets in motion a spiral that culminates in violence and death. In Katie Mitchell’s production, created in 2016 for the Royal Opera House in London, Lucia’s perspective remains consistently at the center. Mitchell portrays her not as a fragile figure descending into madness, but as a life-affirming, multifaceted personality who finds fulfillment for the first time in her love for Edgardo. The loss of that love, her forced marriage, and her murder of Arturo ultimately lead to her mental breakdown. The famous “mad scene” in the third act thus appears not as an operatic convention, but as a comprehensible consequence of concrete, traumatic experiences. The production relocates the action—in contrast to Walter Scott’s original, which is set in the late 17th century—to the 1830s and 1840s, the era of Dark Romanticism. Gothic-Romantic imagery creates an eerie, conspiratorial atmosphere and transforms the story into a psychological thriller. In combination with Donizetti’s stirring music and the bel canto singing, which ruthlessly lays bare the voice and emotions, Mitchell succeeds in making the work a deeply moving, contemporary drama—far removed from decorative historicism.

Dramma lirico in three acts
Libretto by Salvadore Cammarano,
based on the novel *The Bride of Lammermoor* by Sir Walter Scott

by Gaetano Donizetti

approx. 3 hours, including intermission
A more precise duration will be announced at the premiere.