Artur Ruciński and Nadine Sierra sings an excerpt from Enrico and Lucia’s Act II duet in the final dress rehearsal. Production: Simon Stone. Conductor: Riccardo Frizza. 2021-22 season.
I was at the Saturday performance. I have come to the conclusion that great music is great music and the setting we place the opera is only secondary to the singers and the score. Lucia set in the 21st century is as good as Lucia set in 1725. However, the lives of people in 18t century Scotland are unknown to us. We know far more and can relate to lives of 21st century Americans.
What a fabulous production! Never was there a more perfect transliteration of the 18th C. to the decayed Rust Belt of America in the 2010s. Opera is universal and eternal as this production aptly demonstrates.
Most of the people in this comment section forget that most of the operas in the standard repertoire are over 200 years old and we need contemporary productions to attract new audiences to opera. There are things in Lucia that lend themselves well to our society today and it's refreshing to see productions that speak to those themes. It's like Shakespeare. We still perform these works because they hold true to us no matter what year it is. The past productions put us at a distance with the story, which is just as important as the singing.
Why are you under the impression that these modernized productions are somehow more relatable? In the first place, the temporally-adjusted settings are really no less obscure for the average viewer than the traditional one. As one of the replies above mentioned, consider the Las Vegas Rigoletto: What about 1950's Vegas can a modern audience directly relate to ? The answer for almost everyone will be "nothing", and the same is true for whatever setting this production of Lucia is aiming for. You're right that there are things in Lucia that are relevant today. What you don't seem to understand is that people are perfectly capable of grabbing on to those themes and making them contemporary in their own minds, without the production holding their hand . If this were not the case, I would challenge you to justify the success of something like Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. Their worlds are entirely fictional, but the portrayal of the human condition in them is not. As far as the future longevity of opera goes, we must acknowledge that it will either live or die on its own merits. The fact is that modern audiences have more modes of entertainment to choose from than just written words, concerts or theater. Opera is a mode competing with a sea of hundreds of others now, and many accomplish roughly the same thing in a much more accessible manner. No poorly- thought-out contemporary production, that fails to be any more relatable, will change that.
I got into opera only a few years ago. I was reading Mario Puzzo and wanted to see Lucrezia Borgia. Then I saw the Borgias and D'Estes in suits singing in an Office building. I wanted to gouge my eyes out from that cringe.
You do not mess with masterpieces by moving them to contemporary modern times, it seldom work. There is nothing like a beautifully staged opera in the time frame it was meant to be staged. Lucia takes place in the 17th century, not the rust belt middle America. I’ve been attending opera for fifty five years. Opera should be a total experience. Singing, sets,costumes. The only thing this production has going for it is the singing. The rest of it was horrible.
This production looks GHASTLY!! Plus "updating" Lucia to modern day makes no sense, unless you rewrite some of the text. This production is almost as bad as the Las Vegas update of Rigoletto. These types of productions are the reason I don't donate to the Met anymore.
Old people in the comments want to take opera to their graves with them. lol. It's good to have a modern production sometimes. It's relatable and refreshing to see this in a new context.
What a lot of horsecrap, this need to make classics ‘relevant.’ A classic is a classic for a reason; this is the musical equivalent of the dada movement. What’s the next cockamamie idea from some egomaniacal director going to be?
Franchement, de qui se moque-t-on ? Je ne critique pas les interprètes. Une mise en scène est à vomir. J'avais eu l'intention d'assister à la retransmission au cinéma. Heureuse de ne pas avoir dépensé mon argent. Ceci dit, Nadine Sierra est une Lucia digne de Nathalie Dessay.
Praised for her vocal beauty, seamless technique, and abundant musicality, Nadine Sierra is being hailed as one of the most promising, young talents in opera today. She was named the Richard Tucker Award Winner in 2017 and was awarded the 2018 Beverly Sills Artist Award by the Metropolitan Opera. Having made a string of successful debuts at the Met, Teatro alla Scala, Opéra national de Paris, and Staatsoper Berlin, she has become a fixture at many of the top houses around the world. On August 24th, 2018, her debut album, There’s a Place for Us, was released under the Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music labels.
Great artist having to deal with a ridiculous conception from some egotistical stage director that wants to see himself as more important than Donizetti, the singer's and libretto. Such BS.
@@tsquare076 well it’s obvious they have a sound system. The GM uses a mic from the stage to announce a singer dropping out for illness. The orchestra is piped upstage to the singers, and backstage via the house mic. The sound system in the house has existed for decades, though we only have anecdotes that on stage singers are being mic’d and projected into the house.
@@tsquare076 my understanding is that they are barely piped into the house so that at their loudest moments, it’s the acoustic voice we mostly hear, but at the low extremes it doesn’t disappear. I would imagine due to the controversy that publicly advertising this that would ensue, it ensures any amplification that may have been utilized is very subtle.
