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GAETANO DONIZETTI

LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR

CONTENTS

SYNOPSIS P.

AN ADVOCATE FOR THE PROTAGONIST INTERVIEW WITH LAURENT PELLY P.

AT THE ROOT OF BEL CANTO EVELINO PIDÒ P.

POPULAR FROM THE OUTSET ANDREAS LÁNG

THE STATE OPERA’S FIRST LUCIA P.

THE ECSTASY OF ROMANTIC BEL CANTO ARNOLD JACOBSHAGEN P.

ESCAPE INTO MADNESS ERWIN RINGEL P.

IN THE FLOW OF THE NARRATIVE OLIVER LÁNG P.

IMPRINT

GAETANO DONIZETTI

LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR DRAMMA TRAGICO in three acts Libretto SALVADORE CAMMARANO

ORCHESTRA

piccolo / 2 flutes / 2 oboes 2 clarinets / 2 bassoons 4 horns / 2 trumpets 3 trombones / percussion / bell harp / glass harmonica violin I / violin II / viola cello / double bass banda (3 horns / 3 trumpets 3 trombones / tuba / percussion)

STAGE ORCHESTRA

AUTOGRAPH

Museo Teatrale alla Scala Milan WORLD PREMIÈRE (Italian version) 26 SEP 1835 Teatro San Carlo in Naples FIRST PERFORMANCE IN THE HOUSE ON THE RING 3 JAN 1870 Vienna Court Opera

DURATION

INCL. 1 INTERMISSION

LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR

SYNOPSIS Some time ago, Lord Enrico Ashton seized power from the Ravenswood family and killed the head of the family, Edgardo’s father. But when a new monarch ascends the throne, Enrico suddenly finds himself politically persecuted and must fear for his life. To save himself, he determines to arrange the marriage of his sister Lucia, whom he has shielded from the outside world, to the influential Lord Arturo Bucklaw. When he informs his close friends of this, Raimondo, Lucia’s tutor, reminds him how much Lucia is still grieving for her recently deceased mother and is therefore not capable of even considering marriage. To his great dismay Enrico then learns from his captain Normanno that, despite her loss, Lucia has fallen head over heels in love with a man she does not know but who saved her from being attacked by a raging bull. Furthermore it turns out that this unknown man is none other than Enrico’s mortal enemy, Edgardo. Boiling with anger, Enrico swears bloody revenge. While Lucia awaits the rendezvous with Edgardo, she tells her companion Alisa of a frightening apparition which Lucia believes to be the ghost of a woman who was murdered by a Revanswood in a fit of jealousy and thrown into the well. However, her love for Edgardo and the prospect of his imminent arrival soon brighten her mood. Edgardo rushes in shortly thereafter, only to tell Lucia that he must leave for France immediately. Lucia is alarmed at his plan to try and reconcile with Enrico before he leaves and persuades him to abandon it; their love should remain a secret. As they bid farewell to each other, the two quickly exchange rings as a token of their vow of love. During Edgardo’s long absence, all his letters to Lucia are intercepted by Enrico and Normanno and replaced by forgeries. Thus misled, Lucia is persuaded of Edgardo’s infidelity and submissively agrees to marry Arturo. In spite of everything, Lucia wants to remain faithful to Edgardo, but Enrico emphasizes that a refusal to marry Arturo would mean the downfall of their family. Raimondo admonishes Lucia to submit so that her dead Previous pages: SCENE

SYNOPSIS

mother can rest in peace. In desperation, Lucia agrees, but at the same time longs for death. Lucia’s and Arturo’s wedding celebration: Lucia, already starting to lose her mind, is pressured into signing the marriage agreement. Scarcely has she done so when Edgardo unexpectedly enters the room and demands his rightful place at her side. However, when he learns that the young woman has already sealed her marriage to Arturo with her signature, he returns Lucia’s ring and flees to his estate at Wolf’s Crag. A storm is brewing. Furious, Enrico leaves the wedding and goes to seek out his rival in the middle of the night in the tower at Wolf’s Crag. Driven by hatred, vengeance and jealousy, the two men agree to fight a duel at daybreak at the Ravenswood tombs. In the meantime, Lucia has lost her senses and stabbed Arturo to death in the bridal chamber. In a state of complete mental disarray, she enters the ballroom, still filled with guests. In a vision she first sees her marriage to Edgardo and begs her lover, who is not present, to forgive her and to mourn at her grave. With his sister’s madness now evident, the returning Enrico realizes too late that he is to blame. Edgardo awaits the duel with Enrico at the tombs of the Ravenswoods. He learns from several passers-by that Lucia has lost her mind, is on her deathbed and is asking plaintively for him. Edgardo sets out immediately to see his beloved one more time, but Raimondo comes to meet him and confirms that she has already died, as signalled by the chiming death knell. In the hope of being finally united with Lucia, Edgardo stabs himself.

ERWIN RINGEL

ESCAPE INTO MADNESS In the first few decades of the last century, doctors started observing that some cases of schizophrenia in women flared up oddly enough on their wedding nights. They called this phenomenon “nuptial delirium”. However, on closer examination of the personal history of the women concerned, they came across two factors. In most cases they were women who had had a sexually repressive upbringing, they were often completely surprised by their first menstruation, and they considered sexuality to be something indecent or a necessary evil, along the lines of the quip frequently heard in Victorian England: “Close your eyes and think of England.” One might also say that these women felt panic-stricken or even disgusted in the face of their first sexual intercourse. Furthermore, it was one of the cruel and deplorable customs that existed even until the turn of the 20th century (and in rural areas even later than that) that girls were often not permitted to select their life partner themselves. That decision was made by their parents, based on their own interests, and girls were required to comply with it, following the reasoning of Nestroy’s motto: “Love develops in a marriage just as an appetite develops when eating.” If we investigate schizophrenia based only

on the criteria of heritability and the presence of certain metabolic disorders, then we will of course disregard psychological and depth-psychological factors and accordingly be unable to detect them. Naturally, I am in favour of a holistic view of mental disorders, one that does not leave biological factors out of consideration, yet still takes psychological and social factors seriously. If the World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, we must make this excellent description the basis for all research into the ways that diseases, both physical and mental, arise. To be sure, sexual information for, and the attitude towards women has improved, and in the meantime they have also won the right to choose their own partner. “Nuptial delirium” has accordingly largely disappeared today. Instead there are other conflicts that can trigger psychoses. I would therefore strongly recommend that all those who still believe today that they can disregard and discount psychological factors as causative agents (and that means more than a few psychiatrists) go and see the opera Lu cia di Lammermoor. As the result of an intrigue, Lucia’s close relationship with Edgardo, who is on a mission abroad,

ESCAPE INTO MADNESS

is destroyed; his letters are intercepted, and his apparent lack of correspondence is then is explained to Lucia as evidence of his infidelity, until she meekly agrees to marry a man with whom she has no personal relationship (Arturo) but who will bring huge political gain for her brother. Hardly has she signed the marriage agreement when the “faithless” Edgardo appears, and Lucia realizes that she has been the victim of a heinous deception. Under these circumstances, what kind of wedding night can it be? Lucia develops “nuptial delirium”, loses her mind and (“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”) stabs her husband. Ultimately her delirium evidently devolves into the form of schizophrenia that in the past we used to call acute lethal catatonia which new

treatment turned into dangerous catatonia. We have Lucia’s “nuptial delirium” to thank for one of the most harrowing scenes in opera literature, the mad scene with an aria in which the melody emerges time and again, indicating Lucia’s love for Edgardo and so revealing the true cause of her “madness”. Be that as it may: Donizetti was a great musical psychologist from whom we can learn much to this day. Someone calculated that no less than seven characters “lose their minds” in his operas. No other composer can compete with him in this respect! It is all the more tragic that in the final years of his life he himself suffered from progressive paralysis, which ultimately led to his death in 1848.