I’m going to the opera tomorrow night and it’s going to be grim.
The heroine in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor makes Juliette and look soft. At least Juliette didn’t have to kill Tybalt herself, and she wasn’t heartbroken to the point of insanity.

From the opening of Lucia di Lammermoor it is clear that Lucia is not just oppressed by her fueding family, but also tormented from within. Her aria Regnava nel silenzio tells of a ghostly vision that haunts her.

(Sung here by Joan Sutherland with an amazing voice and a terrible hair do.)

The aria foreshadows her Act III mad scene where she murders the man she is forced to marry and goes publicly mad, telling the wedding guests she is reunited with her banished lover before collapsing dead.

(Sung here by Natalie Dessay with a dramatic roll down the staircase.)

The opening night of WA Opera’s production of Lucia is on Saturday. Emma Matthews is Lucia and having seen her versions of tortured heroine in Batavia and Love of the Nightingale I know she will be devastating.

Ah to be a woman.
Brandy anyone?