The juxtaposition is often striking and sometimes makes sense, as when the crew arrives to film Lucia’s unhappily arranged marriage in the second act. A movie screen dominates the top half of the Met’s famously high proscenium, alternating live and prerecorded images the cameras come and go throughout the opera’s three acts. As in his adaptation of Medea that played BAM in 2020, he frequently uses tracking cameras that offer a projected cinematic perspective of what’s already happening onstage. The creative team earned their fair share of boos at the opening night curtain call.Īudiences familiar with Stone’s theatrical works will recognize some of his favorite tricks redeployed here. His Lucia, which transports the opera’s action from the moors of Scotland to contemporary Appalachia, will surely ruffle some feathers. The Met has largely shied away from radical reinterpretations of the standard repertory, perhaps in deference to their conservative audience (and donor base). Stone’s presence certainly ushers in a new school of thought at the opera house, one that is closer to the personenregie style favored in Europe. Would the Australian auteur fare better than Francesca Zambello, Nicolas Joël, or Mary Zimmerman, whose previous outings in this cornerstone of the bel canto repertory faced general derision and relatively short shelf lives?
When the Metropolitan Opera engaged Simon Stone to create a new staging of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, it marked the company’s fourth production in thirty years.
“Lucia di Lammermoor” at the Metropolitan Opera (Photo: Jonathan Tichler)
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