The homicidal bondage is amusing. Some other fairly explicit sex, although a bit anatomically unconvincing, also serves the plot. As for the buckets of blood, well, you can’t have “Lucia di Lammermoor” without blood. No, those really aren’t the problems in a new production of Donizetti’s 1835 opera at the Royal Opera in Covent Garden.One of the major setbacks is a crucial misuse of space. Director Katie Mitchell creates a split stage (it’s a trick she’s often used in other productions too) so that every scene involves two contrasting sets, placed side by side. While Lucia is in her closet getting dressed, her lover Edgardo creeps around the family vault. While Edgardo sits in his study, the heroine is in her bedroom simultaneously tying up and stabbing the husband she’s been forced to marry.The sets are separated by a vertical wall, which means that the sight-lines are grisly for any audience members sitting to the sides of the auditorium. It also means that less than half the stage is ever available for the squeezed chorus, who look as comfortable as jailbirds in a Haitian lockup. (It doesn’t help their sound, either.)Another problem is one of tone. Vicki Mortimer’s realistic sets and costumes place the action firmly in the 1850s, but there are few hints – beyond the broadest of brushstrokes - at the codes of mid-nineteenth century behaviour. Lucia’s brother and priest confront her while she stands undressed in her bathroom; she has sex in front of her maid; and so on. It all feels rather fuzzy and fantastical. It also means that a central plank of Mitchell’s concept – that the blood on Lucia’s dress in her mad scene is not that of her slaughtered husband, but that of the foetus which she has just miscarried – fails to pack the revisionist punch that it should.Musically it’s also a bit patchy. Diana Damrau (Lucia) flings herself into the production wholeheartedly, and if her upper coloratura lacks the bite and ping which some other sopranos have brought to the role, she gives a committed and energetic performance. Charles Castronovo sings with real emotional oomph as Edgardo, but tires by the time he gets to his final scene. Ludovic Tézier booms and blusters his way through the role of Lucia’s domineering brother Enrico. Conductor Daniel Oren gives a somewhat flabby and imprecise account of the score.On opening night there were cheers for the singers, and boos for the director. It’s not an uncommon occurrence at Covent Garden at the moment.“Lucia di Lammermoor” is in repertoire at The Royal Opera until May 19. The production will be broadcast to cinemas worldwide on April 25.
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