It is instructive from a historical standpoint to have Rossini’s Barber immediately precede Donizetti’s tragic Lucia in our 2006 season. We can see and hear within a month’s length of time just how much Italian opera progressed in the twenty years separating these two standard works of the repertory (1816 and 1835). It cannot be denied that all Italian composers of opera after Rossini had to incorporate his ideas and techniques or suffer the consequences. His operas so defined the art form that to ignore his dominating influence was to lose a significant share of the audience market! Therefore in Donizetti’s early operas, both tragic and comic, the marked influence of Rossini can be strongly felt. As he gained confidence and experience, an individual style asserted itself and it is this style that permeates the score of Lucia di Lammermoor.
The overall tinto or ‘color’ of the orchestration is appropriately dark. The Prelude begins with a choir of four horns in B-flat minor, immediately establishing the somber character of the work. It is followed by a chorus of men only, and solo passages by the lower-voiced principals, Enrico, Normanno and Raimondo. The first ‘lightness’ of color is Lucia’s soprano voice and we’re not to hear it until the second scene. Speaking of darkness, Donizetti stretches the limits of writing whole pieces of the score in minor keys, something not commonly done at the time. Lucia’s first aria, “Regnava nel silencio”, is in D minor (even though the key signature is for D major!) and although it doesn’t remain in that key for long it establishes the haunted, melancholy character of the heroine. Orchestral textures throughout also tend towards the dark: note the introduction and the first twelve bars of Edgardo’s aria “Fra poco a me ricovero”. It is unusually introduced by three horns, two bassoons and timpani. When the strings enter on “una pietosa lagrima” it is not the entire string orchestra, but the violas and basses, creating an unusually thick texture, responding to the pathetic nature of the text.
It is in similar instances of text setting that Donizetti’s talent shines. No significant poetic image is not ‘painted’ in the orchestra or ornamented in the vocal line. Listen to his setting of the text “ecco su quell margine l’ombra mostrarsi a me” (“and there at the edge of the pool the ghost appeared to me”) in her opening aria, “Regnava”. The fountain is ‘painted’ for our ears in the brief cadenza on ‘margine’; the word for ‘shade’, or ‘ghost’ (ombra) is given to the lowest note in the passage. Examples like this abound.
The most spectacular musical effects occur in the famous mad scene, of course. Seemingly every human emotion passes through Lucia’s mind in this scene, and melodic reminders of her love duet with Edgardo in Act I provide the pathos necessary for the audience to identify with her and her sense of lost love. Originally the scene was to be shared with the glass harmonica, an idea evidently discarded by the composer just before the premiere. Its eerie harmonics would certainly have produced a wonderful effect, but the flute is much more practical and, frankly, musical. (The glass harmonica can be heard in Beverly Sills’ recording of Lucia, a Westminster album recently re-released on CD). Donizetti perfectly captures Lucia’s disintegration through incredibly effective music, and although Edgardo ends the opera, this scene is the evening’s payoff!