What you won’t hear is the eerie effect created by the glass harmonica, something that Donizetti originally intended and which has come back into fashion of late.
The act 3 sextet, one of the loveliest ensemble moments in all opera, is taken at a fair lick but sets the audience off again (the video would be quite a bit shorter if it weren’t for the frequent breaks for worshipful applause). Richard Bonynge, husband and frequent collaborator of Sutherland, conducts the Met Orchestra nimbly and full-bloodedly. The story’s simple: Lucia is betrothed to one man while in love with another, stabs the bridegroom to death, goes mad and dies and then the true lover stabs himself too. I have to say, I had to scroll back and hear them again. His performance as Massenet’s Werther was phenomenal and he’s stupendous here too, especially in his two fourth act arias that end the opera. He was perhaps the most under-rated of the great tenors of the second half of the 20th century. She’s matched by Spanish tenor Alfredo Kraus in the role of Edgardo. The performance is still a wonder to behold. The voice was beginning its decline by then but it wasn’t the warble it became in the years leading up to her retirement in 1990. She first sang it at Covent Garden in 1959 and still owned it at the age of 57. Lucia was Joan Sutherland’s signature role. When the singing is superlative, as it is here, I always feel that it makes no difference whether the staging was conceived in 1904 or the opera were set on a U-boat. I think that Sir Walter Scott, on whose The Bride of Lammermoor the opera is based, wouldn’t be surprised by anything he saw. This was never more true than of the 1982 broadcast of Lucia di Lammermoor, which is now available to stream. In my earlier reviews of the current Met Opera on Demand season, I’ve commented on the old-fashioned nature of Met stagings in all but recent productions.
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