Tiroler Festspiele - Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor

The opera highlight of the winter season: the staged production of Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. A woman must renounce her great love for family interests and becomes the victim of a forced marriage. In the end, madness and suicide await; one might be tempted to say, "not again." However: Donizetti's music makes the difference. It adorns all the suffering and madness with such grandeur and beauty that in earlier times, audiences often requested an encore from the singers because they wanted to hear them die twice in a row. Repeats in opera performances are rare today – except for last winter's I puritani in Erl! – but the fascination remains. Few operas offer as many first-rate melodic ideas as Lucia di Lammermoor. It has defined a genre: anyone speaking of the tragic masterpieces of Belcanto cannot overlook it.