No, that is not a misprint. Lucie de Lammermoor is the French version of Lucia, which Donizetti reworked in 1839, four years after the Naples original.
It was recomposed for a small theatre in Paris with more limited resources, so the piece was trimmed down by more than 20 minutes, merging two characters, Normanno and Alisa, into one, the unscrupulous Gilbert. Not only is he more obviously malevolent than the man he replaces, but it means that Lucie loses her only female confidante, making the whole piece darker than the original.
Musically, Donizetti unfortunately cut the fine storm scene and rewrote some of the recitative, but otherwise the main arias remain. Some writers have pointed out the substitution of an aria from the composer’s Rosmonda d’Inghilterra for Lucia’s in the first act, but in fact by this time it was normal to make the switch in the Italian original anyway.
The opera is based on Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor, which was itself based on the supposedly true story of the 18th century Scottish nobleman’s daughter who was forced into marriage when secretly betrothed to another, and who on her wedding night killed her husband and went mad.
Director Jacopo Spirei presents the piece in the context of female oppression. The woodland huntsmen of the opening scene are after not game but women, whom they brutally and sexually assault. The same four women reappear as menial porters for the wedding, and they are found, rather oddly, back in the forest at the end, where one of the killers is about to set fire to their bodies. One gets the point, but having the male chorus scoff and smirk was too heavy-handed.
Lucie herself is already a young woman under stress, cutting herself with a razor blade while singing that Rosmonda aria about escaping the cares of the world. And this is before we get to the mad scene, where Caterina Sala appears utterly doused in gore. Call me squeamish.
Sala, then just 21, shot to fame at the Bergamo Donizetti festival two years earlier, in 2021, when she starred in L’elisir d’amore and here again, in an even more challenging coloratura role, she displays that rich, nutty tone with its fast vibrato that is smooth throughout the range, and underlined by expressive intent.
Patrick Kabongo as Edgard has a similar, natural vibrato, and brought out the lyricism of his aria in the closing scene, but in more forceful passages elsewhere his voice was a little low on octane. His acting style might in the cinema be called naturalistic; for an opera of high passion it might be described at best as restrained. In consequence, one never got a sense of great intimacy between the lovers, and Edgard’s sudden reappearance at his fiancée’s marriage ceremony falls flat. There is however more tension in his confrontation with Lucie’s brother Henri Ashton, convincingly sung by Vito Priante. Julien Henric, David Astorga and Roberto Lorenzi fill the lesser roles effectively as Lucie's ill-fated husband Arthur, Gilbert and the cleric Raimond.
The simple set comprises just a painted backdrop of a forest, with a tree trunk and pile of leaves, that serves with the addition of a few benches also as the Ashton demesne. The chorus are generally well directed, but not always distinct in their diction, and, difficult though it might be, it would be well to find a better way of keeping them in character during the climactic scene, instead of gazing dumbly at a blood-drenched, murderous, knife-wielding madwoman for 18 minutes.
Overall, this French reworking seems a little too compressed compared with the more familiar version, but is worth a look if only for Sala, who seems destined for greater glories.