Programs · Episode

DONIZETTI: Lucia di Lammermoor

Program: At the Opera
Aired: Saturday, November 20, 2021 @ 6:00 pm
Hosted by Lisa Simeone

It's hard to think of a heroine with a fate more heartbreaking — or more shocking — than that of Donizetti's Lucia, whose famous mad scene is one of the greatest moments in any opera. The role has long attracted the world's greatest sopranos, and this edition of At the Opera features three of them: Joan Sutherland, Anna Moffo, and Maria Callas. We'll present Sutherland in recordings from 1971 and 1961, also featuring Luciano Pavarotti and Robert Merrill. Moffo stars in a release from 1965, with Carlo Bergonzi.  And, Callas brings down the house in a legendary, live recording made in Berlin in 1955, with conductor Herbert von Karajan.

Featured Recordings:

Richard Bonynge, conductor

Royal Opera House Orchestra and Chorus

(London 410193)

CAST:  Joan Sutherland (Lucia); Luciano Pavarotti (Edgardo); Sherrill Milnes (Enrico); Nicolai Ghiaurov (Raimondo); Ryland Davies (Arturo); Huguette Tourangeau (Alisa); Pier Francesco Poli (Normanno)

Georges Prêtre, conductor

RCA Italiana Opera Orchestra and Chorus

(RCA/Sony 88875073472)

CAST:  Anna Moffo (Lucia); Carlo Bergonzi (Edgardo); Mario Sereni (Enrico); Ezio Flagello (Raimondo); Pierre Duval (Arturo); Corinna Vozza (Alisa); Vittorio Pandano (Normanno)

John Pritchard, conductor

Orchestra and Chorus of the Santa Cecilia Academy, Florence

(Decca 467688)

CAST:  Joan Sutherland (Lucia); Renato Cioni (Edgardo); Robert Merrill (Enrico); Cesare Siepi (Raimondo); Kenneth Macdonald (Arturo); Ana Raquel Satre (Alisa); Rinaldo Pelizzoni (Normanno)

Herbert von Karajan, conductor

La Scala Chorus

(EMI 66441)

RIAS Symphony Orchestra

CAST:  Maria Callas (Lucia); Giuseppe di Stefano (Edgardo); Rolando Panerai (Enrico); Nicola Zaccaria (Raimondo); Giuseppe Zampieri (Arturo); Luisa Villa (Alisa); Mario Carlin (Normanno)

MORE ABOUT THE OPERA:

In 1908, the superstar tenor Enrico Caruso and five colleagues made a recording that became an instant legend — both for the quality of its musical artistry, and for its exorbitant price. Fittingly, the music came from an opera that's been creating a similar sensation ever since its premiere in 1835.

The recording is of the sextet from Act Two of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermooor. It was released on a single-sided record at a price of $7, earning it a nickname it has carried ever since: the "Seven-Dollar Sextet." In terms of buying power, seven 1908 dollars might well purchase nearly $200 worth of stuff now — depending on how you do the math — and these days you can find that same recording of the sextet online for about a buck!

The fame of the sextet itself hardly ended with that one record. The tune turned up in the 1932 mob movie Scarface, whistled by a hitman played by Paul Muni. And its penetration into the wider culture continued in a similar vein in 2006, when the mob boss played by Jack Nicholson in Martin Scorsese's The Departed used the sextet's melody as his ringtone.

Yet the Lucia sextet isn't the opera's most famous passage. That distinction would fall to the title character's great mad scene in the final act; it's hard to top a beautiful young bride, in a blood-spattered nightgown, going totally nuts after stabbing her new husband to death — on their wedding night.

As for the opera itself, its cultural impact as a whole has also been impressive. From the start, it was seen as perhaps the ultimate expression of Romantic era sensibility, and it made its impact felt in literature as well as in the theater. Lucia is mentioned in novels ranging from Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and E. M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread, to John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire.

But, returning to the sextet: It may not be the opera's best-known number, and the opera in its entirety may be even more sensational than any of its great, individual moments. Yet the sextet does remind us that for Lucia's mad scene and the opera's compelling, Romantic story line to have their full effect, it takes a perfect storm of troubled characters and turbulent relationships — and they're all wrapped up in that one, exquisite ensemble.

The title role in Donizetti's Lucia has always attracted the world's greatest sopranos, and on AT THE OPERA host Lisa Simeone brings us three of them, as we travel through the opera listening to four different recordings. We'll hear Joan Sutherland in two of those. In one, made in 1971, she stars alongside tenor Luciano Pavarotti in the splendid, Act One duet. We'll hear Sutherland in Lucia's mad scene in a recording from 1961 that also features baritone Robert Merrill. For Act Two and the sextet, we'll sample a 1965 recording with Anna Moffo in the title role and tenor Carlo Bergonzi as Edgardo. And, as a sort of encore of the mad scene, we'll hear Maria Callas in a legendary, live recording led by conductor Herbert von Karajan, in 1955.

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