Lucia di Lammermoor review – Jennifer France is a delight in touching and convincing Donizetti staging

Opera Holland Park, LondonThe unforced warmth of France’s heroine wins the audience’s sympathy from the outset in Cecilia Stinton’s thoughtful new staging of the bel canto bloodbathA murderess who goes mad or a madwoman who commits murder? Donizetti’s bel canto bloodbath has lost none of its power to intrigue as well as entertain in the 190 years since its Naples premiere. In Cecilia Stinton’s thoughtful new staging the heroine is a charmer, a little wacky perhaps, prone to the odd hallucination maybe, but in different circumstances you imagine she’d be fun to be around. It’s also clear from the sexual violence played out behind the backs of her testosterone-fuelled lover and brother as they sing a rollicking duet on the forestage that when this Lucia kills it will be in self-defence.Opera Holland Park is ideally placed to host a traditional production. Neil Irish’s sets, subtly lit by Tim van ’t Hof, seem to grow out of the Jacobean walls of Holland House. The action is partly set inside a crumbling mansion, here pointedly in need of repair. The rest occurs in and around the lichen-encrusted cemetery where the soil is still fresh on the grave of Lucia’s mother. With the orchestra located in the middle of the action, Stinton uses a potentially tricksy space well, though the busy chorus of parlour maids, gardeners and wedding guests could be more imaginatively blocked at times, and the 19th-century Scottish dad dancing was perhaps a step too far. Continue reading...

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Lucia di Lammermoor at Opera Holland Park review: the chorus is stiff but the leads soar

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