BY EVAN BAKER

worked since 1828. In all, Donizetti composed seventy operasbefore dementia ended his career in 1843; he died from syphilisfive years later at age fifty-one.

Salvadore Cammarano (1801–1852), stage director and houselibrettist for the San Carlo, received the assignment to write thelibretto for Donizetti’s newest opera. The Bride of Lammermoor bySir Walter Scott (1771–1832), published in 1819 as part of the“Waverly Novels,” served as the source for what became Cam-marano’s first great success. He went on to write over thirty-fivelibrettos, of which eight were for Donizetti and four for GiuseppeVerdi, with his last and equally successful libretto (albeit posthu-mous) being the immortal Il Trovatore.

Cammarano’s treatment of The Bride of Lammermoor is a marvelof adaptation. Although four previous composers wrote operasbased on Scott’s novel, probably neither Cammarano norDonizetti was familiar with the earlier works. Although Cam-marano excised many of the major characters, the essence of thestory remained the same: thwarted love and societal pressuresplaced upon an already fragile mind. At the same time, the“romantic” atmosphere of the dark, spooky, and exotic Scottishhighlands, complete with phantoms and curses, remained promi-nent. Lady Ashton, Lucy’s mother, a strong-willed and manipula-

Dr. Evan Baker is an educator, writer, and lecturer on operatichistory and production. He contributes regularly to several publi-cations, including San Francisco Opera Magazine.

“So, you have ta’en up your bonny bridegroom?”

Gaetano Donizetti and

Lucia di Lammermoor

S o wrote Gaetano Donizetti on July 16, 1835,sourly noting the current difficulties besetting thetheater scene in Naples. Rehearsals for the sea-

son had broken off. Singers refused to work until they were paid.Donizetti, in his position as music director of the Royal Theatersof Naples—the San Carlo and the Fondo—managed to squeezemoney out of the theater management, now perilously close tobankruptcy. The rehearsals began anew, and the premiere of hisopera on September 26 was no longer threatened.

Despite these conditions, Lucia di Lammermoor would beDonizetti’s fiftieth [!] opera in seventeen years. Donizetti did notachieve acclaim until 1830 with his thirtieth opera, Anna Bolena atthe Teatro Carcano, followed two years later by L’Elisir d’Amore

(his thirty-ninth opera), this time at the Teatro Cannobbiana. Hescored another hit with Lucrezia Borgia (his forty-fourth) in 1833 atthe Teatro alla Scala. Ironically, Donizetti achieved his first greatsuccesses in Milan; only with his Lucia di Lammermoor did hefinally achieve a resounding success in Naples, where he had

“Our theaters go bad to worse… The operas flop, the public hisses, ouraudience is scarce…. Now at the San Carlo, we will have Persiani’s oldopera Danao, then my Lucia di Lammermoor which is now finished….The crisis is near, the public has indigestion, the theater management isfalling apart, Vesuvius is smoking, and the eruption is near.”

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tive woman who thinks only of the family’s position in society andits honor, is the evil personified in the novel. For the opera, Cam-marano deleted Lady Ashton and transformed Lucy’s brotherHenry into the chief protagonist, Enrico. To save his political andfinancial fortunes, Enrico is determined to marry Lucia to ArturoBucklaw. If she does not, Enrico will curse her and return to haunther. He does not hear her plaintive but crucial question, “...andme? What of me?” To trick her into signing a bridal contract,Enrico produces a forged letter from Lucia’s beloved Edgardo sup-posedly renouncing his love for her. Her psychological reaction istaken from Walter Scott’s Lucy: “‘To sign and seal!’ echoed Lucy,in a muttering tone, as the door of the apartment closed—‘to signand seal—to do and die!’” This is a significant point. In Act I,scene 2 Lucia and Edgardo pledged not only their love andbetrothal to each other, but also exchanged rings, which, accordingto a note in the libretto, had the force of marriage. Should thattroth be broken, both lovers would be cursed, hence Lucia’sdespair for not only her love but also shattering her mind.

One of the many famous and easily identifiable scenes inopera—such as the Habanera in Bizet’s Carmen or Wagner’s “Rideof the Valkyries”—is Lucia’s public mad scene at theend of Act II, which has no equivalent in the novel. Awedding celebration does take place, and a scream isheard from the apartments where Bucklaw and Lucyhave retired. The Ashtons rush to the rooms, wherethey find the gravely wounded Bucklaw (he does notdie) and, as described in the novel:

[they] discovered something white in thecorner of the great old-fashioned chimneyof the apartment. Here they found theunfortunate girl seated, or rather couchedlike a hare upon its form—her head-geardisheveled, her night-clothes torn and dab-bled with blood, her eyes glazed, and herfeatures convulsed into a wild paroxysm ofinsanity. When she saw herself discovered,she gibbered, made mouths, and pointedat them with her bloody fingers, with thefrantic gestures of an exulting demoniac.

Female assistance was now hastily sum-moned; the unhappy bride was overpow-ered, not without the use of some force. Asthey carried her over the threshold, shelooked down, and uttered the only articu-late words that she had yet spoken, saying,with a sort of grinning exultation, “So, youhave ta’en up your bonny bridegroom?”

Lucy is not heard from thereafter in the novel. Nopublic display of madness or singing of “sweet sounds,”

no viewing of phantoms—nor does she call for her belovedEdgardo. Cammarano’s skill at transforming this episode into anopera scene combined with Donizetti’s music created one of themost theatrical and musically thrilling scenes in opera.

Donizetti was pleased with the reactions to the premiere onSeptember 26, 1835. In a letter to Giovanni Ricordi, heproudly wrote:

It has pleased very much, if I can believe in theapplause and the compliments I have received. Iwas called out many times, and a great many timesthe singers, too…. The second evening I saw a thingmost uncommon in Naples: namely, at the finaleafter the great cheers for the adagio [the greatsextet], Duprez [Edgardo] in the curse causedhimself to be applauded to the heights…. Everynumber was listened to in religious silence andspontaneously hailed with shouts of Evviva!....

In the past, Lucia di Lammermoor became almost a parody as a col-oratura soprano’s showpiece and sometimes a showstopper. Theextraordinary vocal pyrotechnics were not a part of the original1835 score, nor was the scene at first performed solely with a fluteaccompaniment. The mad scene does include coloratura passages,but these are not extravagant or ostentatious; they mirror Lucia’smadness. Donizetti did not write ornamentation or roulades thatwould highlight only the voice: the music as written is essential to

Left: Beverly Sills in the title role of the 1972 production.

Below: Lily Pons began her long relationship with San FranciscoOpera in the title role of the 1932 production. She sang Lucia ineleven subsequent Company productions.

the drama and the display of Lucia’s state of mind. All of the coloratura was com-posed originally to exploit the fine vocal gifts of the first Lucia, Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani. A glass harmonica would accompany Lucia’s solo appearances: the first atan abandoned fountain before meeting her beloved Edgardo in Act I, scene 2 andher grand finale in Act III, scene 2.

Donizetti had intended for a glass harmonica to accompany and interact withthe soprano and the flute. The glass harmonica, a musical instrument developedby Benjamin Franklin in the 1760s, is a series of glass bowls seemingly stacked ontheir sides within one another mounted on a rotating spindle, powered either by afoot-operated treadle (much like the old manual sewing machine) or by an electricmotor. As the bowls spin, the musician places moist fingertips on the glass, which through friction produce eerie, undulating, and spookytones. (A similar tone can be created by rubbing on the rim of a crystal glass in a circular motion with a moistened fingertip.)

For the premiere, however, Donizetti was forced to remove the part for the glass harmonica and rescored the music for a solo flute.The cause for the change remained unclear only until recently: Earlier in the season, the Teatro San Carlo utilized the glass harmon-ica for a ballet. Recent research uncovered a more practical explanation—in the midst of a pay dispute with the management, the glassharmonica player sued the theater, which in turn, dismissed him from further service. Seeing no other alternative, Donizetti simplyrescored the part for solo flute.

Before copyright became the norm, keeping the music together—minimizing cuts, substituting arias, and making other musicalchanges without the permission of the composer—was equally difficult. Some time after the successful premiere, Fanny Tacchinardisubstituted the fountain aria “Regnava nel silenzio alta la notte e bruna” (“Dark night reigned in silence”) with “Perché non ho delvento l’infaticabil volo?” (“Why do I not have the tireless flight of the wind?”) from Donizetti’s Rosmonda d’Inghilterra that had its pre-miere a year earlier at the San Carlo. Tacchinardi made the substitution for her first stage entrance in consideration of her stage fright,for this aria is not as difficult to sing as the original from Lucia. It is not known if Donizetti approved of this change before 1837. How-ever, for the 1839 Parisian performances of Lucie de Lammermoor at the Théâtre de la Renaissance, Donizetti supervised the reworking ofthe score and approved of Tacchinardi’s substitution. The aria, now translated as “Que n’avons-nous des ailes…” (“If only we hadwings…”), was incorporated into the score, and the results of Donizetti’s ministrations were published in French that same year. (Virgin

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Classics recorded Natalie Dessay in this version in 2002 from performances at Lyon Opera.) Other major changes have included omit-ting the “Wolf ’s Crag” where Enrico meets Edgardo in the ruins of the Ravenswood Castle, informing Edgardo of Lucia’s impendingnuptials and challenging him to a duel. Even the final scene with Edgardo’s great aria, “Fra poco a me ricovero darà negletto avello”(“Soon, a neglected tomb shall cover me”) was not immune; sometimes the opera would end after the mad scene in the belief thatnothing could compare to the soprano’s demise.

Not until long after the premiere did the coloratura virtuosity entrench itself into the mad scene, thanks to Nelly Melba’s perfor-mances as Lucia in 1889 at the Paris Opéra. The inserted cadenza—a virtuoso vocal passage—occurs at the end of the cantabile,“Ardon gli incensi” (“The incense is burning”) before Enrico’s entrance into the scene. Three years later, a report of Melba’s perfor-mance at La Scala noted, “It is a long time since it has fallen to us to hear anything more perfect, more electrifying. The enthusiasmwas such that the aggressive audience vigorously demanded an encore, which the diva courteously provided.” Several versions of thecadenza were published, and the music spread to other sopranos—some gifted, and many not. Here, an irony: early in the life of Lucia

di Lammermoor the mad scene was not considered a tour de force, nor was it as highly regarded as its equivalents in Bellini’s Il Pirata

(1827) and I Puritani (1835), or Donizetti’s own Anna Bolena (1830). Sopranos after Melba have reigned supreme with their displays of vocal virtuosity accompanied by the flute. In San Francisco, the

performances of Lily Pons, Anna Moffo, Joan Sutherland, and Beverly Sills in the twentieth century continued to spread the fame ofLucia di Lammermoor. Now Natalie Dessay continues the trend into the twenty-first century.

Left: Luciano Pavarotti sang the role of Edgardo with the Company in 1968 and1972 (pictured).

Center: Joan Sutherland made her San Francisco Opera debut in the title role ofthe 1961 production.

Right: Ashley Putnam in the title role of the 1981 production.

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