Donizetti: Lucia Di Lammermoor – Diana Damrau

   in Opera Now (Dec, 2017)
Last Christmas, I offered you a morally degenerate selection of operas featuring murder, suicide, incest and potential infanticide. Well, it’s a time for tradition isn’t it, so let’s have more of the same with our mince pies this year. I have also thrown in two free bouts of lyric insanity should you be stuck for a present. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

First to lose her wits is Lucia di Lammermoor, filmed at Covent Garden in 2016. I’m pleased to say that the singing had sharpened up after a shaky first night. The production, alas, hadn’t. Katie Mitchell’s feminist interpretation includes much that Donizetti didn’t intend you …