GOING MAD FOR 'LUCIA'
                    Donizetti Opera a Mega-Hit in Walnut Creek 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Aug. 11-18, 2010
                                                                  Vol. 13, No. 2
        WALNUT CREEK, CA---One of the world's shortest opera seasons has produced one of the big hits of the summer in this suburban community some 45 minutes’ drive east of San Francisco.
            Festival Opera, which presents just two operas a year, found subtlety, dramatic substance and force in the masterful Donizetti tragedy “Lucia di Lammermoor” (1838), prompting the patron next to me to opine, “This is better than the Metropolitan Opera production!”
            Yes, opera fans, very often, small is more, and less is beautiful; the compact Hofmann Theatre is just right for this drama skillfully mapped out by Stage Director Mark Foehringer who insists on singers’ mobility around the stage space. Too often viewed as a mere coloratura vehicle with a powerful mad scene, this is now a sensitive, pre-Verdian tale of love, betrayal, conflict, brazen ambition and spirituality. And while “Lucia” is often a one-dimensional love story of her and Enrico, Festival Opera admirably also highlighted the sparks between Lucia and her power-hungry manipulative brother Enrico as fleshed out in their extended duet “Il pallor funesto,” a masterful musical moment brought out by Angela Cadelago and baritone Brian Leerhuber, both superb singer-actors.
            Cadelago played the title role with telling impact, even if her attempt at girlishness in the early scene was unconvincing. Her Lucia is badly shaken by the forged letters claiming her lover’s infidelity. When pushed into a marriage with the foppish Arturo (Michael Foreman), her mind snaps. She murders him with a knife in the bridal suite and emerges caked in blood, still grasping the murder weapon. The ensuing mad scene is one of the longest and most famous in all opera as she sings snippets of earlier happy themes and wanders absently (and at times violently) around the stage, terrifying the wedding guests who much prefer savoring the party and inevitable Scotch whisky over getting blood stains and knife-stabs on their apparel. 
            Joking aside, the opera should probably end right there. But a final graveyard scene gives the lover Edgardo (the booming-voiced tenor Thomas Glenn) a final chance to bemoan her death, with the robust Festival Opera chorus---some 35 strong---as fellow mourners. Glenn still needs to loosen up his stiff stage manner and learn that singing true beats singing loud, any day.
            In the Aug. 10 performance, Assistant Conductor Andrew Whitfield took over unannounced. After a dissonant start, he and the pit orchestra settled down into a nuanced reading, with attractive fermate (pauses) and diminuendos in the ensembles---precisely the elements separating the routine from the memorable. The delicate ensembles, including the famous wedding-scene Sextet, came off in fine balance.
            A strong supporting cast comprised bass Kirk Eichelberger (the chaplain Raimondo) and mezzo Patrice Houston (the lady in waiting Alisa).
            The sets were fragmentary and symbolic, suggesting the moods of the drama, with the gloomy, tilted tombstones of the finale the most effective.
            For those bemoaning the absence of kilts in this Scottish drama after Walter Scott’s romantic novel, the choristers’ wigs at least reflected hairdos of the past in portraiture. The customary deletion of the Wolf’s Crag scene, in which Enrico and Edgardo commit to a duel, shortened the opera to just two and a half hours, with two intermissions.
            ADDENDA---The Metropolitan Opera production, which had reaped resounding boos when its producer took bows at its opening, had featured among other novelties a photographer on stage, even though photography had not even been invented in the days of Scott or Donizetti…Cadelago had been heard with Berkeley Opera previously; Opera San Jose stalwarts include Houston, Leerhuber and Eichelberger, the latter to sing in David Carlson’s “Anna Karenina” there next month.
            Donizetti’s opera “Lucia di Lammermoor,” in Italian, by Festival Opera, with orchestra. Hofmann Theatre, Walnut Creek. Through Aug. 15. For info: (925) 944-9610, or go online.

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2010
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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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