Laura Claycomb Tries To Forget Sutherland And Callas "Lucia"

Creative Coloratura: Laura Claycomb wrote her
Lucia cadenzas with conductor Patrick Summers
(Photo: Sergio Valente)

"Laura Claycomb dies in the New Orleans Opera production of Lucia di Lammermoor. It happens every time a soprano sings the title role -- and most of the world's great sopranos have done it since Donizetti penned this hyper-romantic, bel canto masterpiece in 1835. So how does Claycomb plan to match Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland and other legends who dwell only in memory or the scratchy recordings prized by opera nuts? 'I had to clean the slate to sing Lucia,' Claycomb said. 'So my first job was trying to forget Callas and Sutherland -- all the great stars on old recordings whose singing has gotten stuck in everyone's ears. People sometimes think that's the only approach, but it's really just the style of the 1950s, the style that emerged more than a century after Donizetti wrote the piece.'... 'If you look at the early performance history of bel canto operas, you can see that the originators chose roles very differently, and that audiences expected lighter, more flexible voices -- my kind of voice -- not the big, inflexible Mack Truck singers that sometimes rumble through this repertoire today,' Claycomb said. Claycomb is thrilled with the New Orleans cast, which includes New Orleanian Casey Candebat, Michael Chioldi and William Burden, among others. She also had praise for stage director E. Loren Meeker, who has helped to set the New Orleans production in the era of Downton Abbey." [Source]

Diana Damrau On Her Mad Journey With "Lucia di Lammermoor"

A Vision of Delirium: Diana Damrau
(Photo: Rebecca Fay)

"So when did this particular journey begin? 'I saw my first Lucia performance in Vienna standing in the famous Stehplätze [standing places] for a few euros,' she tells me. 'I was a student and I went to Vienna and I got to see Edita Gruberová in Lucia. But I think I already heard the Sutherland recording and also Callas.' And the Damrau version? She’s probably more ‘Callas’ than ‘Sutherland’. But where have her ideas about the part come from? 'Lucia di Lammermoor is the most veristic of the bel canto roles,' she explains. 'The madness of Lucia makes it a real role for acting and singing. Lucia’s madness is an illness. It’s not just a vehicle for a soprano to show her skills and her technique. I talked to doctors about that. She is bipolar and you can hear that very clearly in the first aria.' The particularly modern concept of a bipolar bel canto heroine is intriguing and Damrau has clearly thought it through. 'She gets very, very happy and almost frenetic when she talks about her visions. And ill people can have visions – she’s not just the standard ‘romantic’ figure of the time. Because she is bipolar she really gets very dark and very frightened. Everything seems to be real and very dramatic to her.

Click here to purchase the recording.

She’s under great, great pressure because her mother has died and she’s in a really bad situation. This comes to its peak when she finds out her brother betrayed her – that he forced her into a political marriage and everyone around her has actually manipulated her. When Edgardo comes back and curses her and says, 'you betrayed love and you betrayed God', that’s more tension than she can take. Then the illness comes. The madness breaks out and she kills someone.'" [Source] Read Diana Damrau's tribute to Maria Callas by clicking here. You can sample Erato's new recording of Lucia di Lammermoor featuring Diana Damrau. A video of the mad scene from the recording is after the jump.

Elizabeth Futral Answers Questions Before Making Portland Debut

"How did you get involved in opera? I started piano lessons when I was five, and I always loved music. My mom was a classically trained pianist and flutist, and my dad was a minister. She gave me a lot of the classics and he gave me his stage presence. He also has a beautiful natural singing voice. I grew up in Louisiana near New Orleans. I ended up going to a small Baptist university in Alabama…and had a wonderful mentor, my first voice teacher, Eleanor Owsley, who was the one who really encouraged me. She had the vision for me…she’s been a great friend over all these years. Then I went to Indiana University in Bloomington to graduate school, which is the big opera factory of the Midwest. It’s a huge music school and they have a really big opera program. From there, I went to Chicago’s Young Artists Program, and afterwards I just stayed there. I kind of kept going through the doors that were open to me, and they luckily were opened, and I had good activities along the way. I’m very fortunate." [Source] Read the full interview by clicking here.

"Lucia di Lammermoor" Sextet Makes a Cameo in 1949 Film

A LETTER TO THREE WIVES
"Lora May Hollingsway, who grew up next to the wrong side of the tracks, married her boss who thinks she is just a gold digger. Rita Phipps makes as much money writing radio scripts at night as her school teacher husband does. Deborah Bishop looked great in a Navy uniform in WWII but fears she'll never be dressed just right for the Country Club set. These three wives are boarding a boat filled with children going on a picnic when a messenger on a bicycle hands them a letter addressed to all three from Addie who has just left town with one of their husbands. They won't know which one until that night." [Source]

CAST:
Jeanne Crain as Deborah Bishop
Linda Darnell as Lora Mae Hollingsway
Ann Sothern as Rita Phipps
Kirk Douglas as George Phipps
Paul Douglas as Porter Hollingsway
Classical music used in the film includes Concerto No. 2 in B Flat Major, Op. 83 by Brahms and Wein, weib und Gesang, Op. 333 by Johann Strauß. Watch how a piano reduction of "Chi mi frena in tal momento?", which begins the sextet from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, creeps into the 1949 film from director Joseph L. Mankiewicz:

Enjoy a couple classic clips of the vocal version of the Lucia sextet after the jump.

Lucia Hosts Her Own Super Perigee at the MET Matinee

Moon over Ravenswood
(Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)

Yesterday a phenomenon occurred in the evening skies that only comes around once every 18 years: a super perigee. The moon is at its closet point to the earth during its nocturnal orbit giving it an appearance of 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter. But that moon also appeared in Act III of the Metropolitan Opera's matinee performance of Lucia di Lammermoor featuring Natalie Dessay in the title role. The 2007 production, which first premiered with Dessay before hosting Diana Damrau and Anna Netrebko as the mad Scottish lass, is pleasantly surprising in its mid-19th-century updating. A few particulars jumped out of yesterday's performance that shed new light on Donizetti's bel canto masterpiece that many compare to early Verdi. Is it possible in addition to Lucia suffering from traumatic grief and the constant longing for her recently deceased mother, as well as other apparitions of persons she didn't know personally, that she is also the victim of some sort of incestuous abuse? It is not beyond the realm of possibility that she is emotionally constricted due to an inappropriate, and most-likely non-consensual, relationship with her brother. Two glaring points in the libretto suggest something along these lines when in Act I Enrico refers to the situation of Lucia's secret meetings as if he is a jealous lover and in Act III once the stabbing has occurred she begins talking directly to her brother as if he were Edgardo. And certainly this sort of trauma would make her fall in love with Enrico's sworn enemy and would most definitely drive an enraged woman to murder. It's clear her brother has a strong hold over her that goes beyond sibling duty when he demands she marry Arturo in order to save his reputation and fortune. Ludovic Tézier, playing the role of Enrico, definitely upped the smarmy factor on this character, while managing to sing so well you couldn't resist him.

Other musical moments that really stood out during the performance included Deborah Hoffman's exquisite harp playing for the introduction to Act I, Scene ii with Lucia and Alisa at the fountain directly precluding "Regnava nel silenzio." It not only felt like time had stopped during her playing but that this music seemed eerily modern. Thanks should be given to conductor Patrick Summers for allowing this fine artist to make real music out of this stoic moment. Theodora Hanslowe as Alisa was outstanding in sound and appearance. Another standout performance came from the pivotal, albeit brief, role of Arturo played here by tenor Matthew Plenk. Not only did he look like something straight out of a Jane Austen novel, he sang with the ardent and penetrating tone one wants to hear from a lover like Edgardo rather than the passive bridegroom-to-be.

Actress/Model Lily Cole represents
an ideal image of Lucy Ashton

Natalie Dessay has always presented an interesting dilemma for the opera fan. She has a magnificent instrument and immense stage acting abilities, but she tends to overly use glottal attacks and jarring sforzandi. Her voice also lies somewhere between a Lily Pons and Edita Gruberova type of coloratura, but it seems as though she desires something more along the lines of Joan Sutherland or Maria Callas type of sound. Her portrayal is most affecting without going completely melodramatic in the mad scene. The most touching moment of her performance comes when she sings an unaccompanied section of cadenzas during the mad scene. Originally intended to be sung with glass harmonica and later with two flutes, it seems as though the Metropolitan Opera was not willing to grant a request by the singer for the former so she opted to sing it a capella which Ms. Dessay feels, rightly so, that it makes the character seem even more fragile. Watch a demonstration of the glass harmonica that did accompany Natalie Dessay's mad scene at the Mariinsky Gala in Russia. There were only two or three moments where the singer's voice faltered due to lack of air flow or vibration of the vocal folds, otherwise it was an excellent performance. And one cosmetic side note about the wig: there is extra layer of exoticism when the title role of Lucia is played as a ravishing redhead, which is not the case in this production. [Source]