Arena Theater Presents The MET's Production of Liucia di Lammermoor" A Reimagining of Donizetti's Opera, Starring Nadine Sierra, May 21
Opera lovers will be doubly pleased this month with the addition of a second MET performance on Saturday, May 21: "Liucia di Lammermoor"! Tickets are $24 for General Admission, $22 for Seniors, and $18 for students. The run-time is 205 minutes with two intermissions.
In recent seasons, soprano Nadine Sierra has brought down the house at the Met with virtuosic vocalism and captivating stage presence as Gilda in Rigoletto, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, and Ilia in Idomeneo. Now, she takes on one of the repertory’s most formidable and storied roles, the haunted heroine of Lucia di Lammermoor, in an electrifying new staging by in-demand Australian theater and film director Simon Stone, conducted by Riccardo Frizza. Show-stopping tenor Javier Camarena adds to the bel canto fireworks as Lucia’s beloved, Edgardo, with baritone Artur Ruciński as her overbearing brother, Enrico, and bass Matthew Rose as her tutor, Raimondo.
World premiere: Teatro San Carlo, Naples, 1835. The character of Lucia has become an icon in opera and beyond, an archetype of the constrained woman asserting herself in society. She reappears as a touchstone for such diverse later characters as Flaubert’s adulterous Madame Bovary and the repressed Englishmen in the novels of E. M. Forster. The insanity that overtakes and destroys Lucia, depicted in opera’s most celebrated mad scene, has especially captured the public imagination. Donizetti’s handling of this fragile woman’s state of mind remains seductively beautiful, thoroughly compelling, and deeply disturbing.
The tale was originally set in Scotland, which, to artists of the Romantic era, signified a wild landscape on the fringe of Europe, with a culture burdened by a French-derived code of chivalry and an ancient tribal system. Civil war and tribal strife are recurring features of Scottish history, creating a background of fragmentation reflected in both Lucia’s family situation and her own fragile psyche. The design of the Met’s new production by Simon Stone suggests a present-day American Rust Belt, an area once prosperous but now fallen into decline and neglect.
NOTE:
Attendees must be fully vaccinated. You are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after you have received a second dose in a two-dose vaccine series or two weeks after you have received a single-dose vaccine. Please provide proof of vaccination through an original physical vaccination card or photograph of it plus photo ID upon arrival at the box office. Masks are strongly recommended but not required.
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