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. (The latter season was captured on DVD.“Lucia di Lammermoor” at the Metropolitan Opera (Photo: Jonathan Tichler)

Operagoers with the patience of Edward Casaubon will have eventually gleaned that this is in fact a revival of Laurent Pelly’s production, which premièred at the Santa Fe Opera Festival in 2006 and moved to Covent Garden in 2011. The score, one of Massenet’s most original, contains distinct hints of Wagner, Offenbach, Strauss, and Debussy.Īccording to the Met’s program, this is a new production but we all know the Met can be cavalier about what’s happening elsewhere. Premièred in 1899, it ended a decade that had produced Werther (1892), Manon (1894), and Thaïs (1894).

Jules Massenet’s fifteenth opera (April 24, ★★★ ★ ) is largely unknown to modern audiences, but its neglect is a mystery, for this version of Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairy tale (based on a libretto by Henri Caïn) contains much enchanting music and several delicious roles for the female voice. ABR Arts’s long day’s journey into operatic night continued with three familiar productions, one of them new to the Metropolitan Opera.

Lucia di lammermoor met opera review