Review: LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, Opera Holland Park

There are few more agreeable places to spend a balmy summer’s evening in London than Opera Holland Park. Cocktails on the terrace? A flute of Buck’s Fizz perhaps? Pimms and lemonade with strawberries and cream like Jannick and Carlos are still bashing it about a few miles away at the All England Club? Summer doesn’t last long and half of it seems to be spent on crammed tube trains, so why not?

It’s all so lovely that the opera itself can be something of an afterthought rather than the main course, but I guess that’s the nature of country house opera, a genre that’s careful not to oversell its charms and slay that golden goose of an oasis it always provides.That said, opera seldom undersells its melodrama and Gaetano Donizetti’s take on the Sir Walter Scott tale of murder and madness has the emotion dialled up to 11, so strap yourself in and don’t forget to read the trigger warnings.

Lucia Ashton is the consideration in a contract of marriage brokered by her brother, Enrico with the monstrous, but wealthy, Arturo, Lord Bucklaw. She loves Edgardo, who is, unhappily for both of them, her brother’s sworn enemy. Quite early on, you know things are not going to end well and, sure enough, they don’t.

Before we get into the singing, the music and the mayhem, it’s worth pausing to reflect on how appalling, but commonplace, it was for marriages to be planned for this purpose - the financial security of a family fallen on hard times (not that hard, but hard enough). Enrico may be an utter (retracted - ed) but you can see in the desperate looks of the servants that Lucia’s compliance may be a matter of reputation and status for him, but life and death for those who worked in his service. It makes a simple allocation of goodies and baddies more complicated, but nobody is suggesting that Lucia isn’t wrong to stand up for herself or that the appalling dilemma she faces isn’t enough to disturb her mind.

The manifestation of that is, of course, the signature scene of the opera and a high point in any soprano’s career. Jennifer France doesn’t let us down, defining the operatic jargon term Bel Canto with a virtuoso display of technical mastery in the famous (or is that infamous?) “Il dolce suono” supported by an tremendous commitment to a full-bodied madness. Opera can often feel a little static, but she perambulates the vast stage, her shift dress marked with murder, like an even madder version of the young Kate Bush. Director, Cecilia Stinton, demanded a lot and boy, did she (and us) get it.

It’s needed too because France has been excellent in the first act but events move a little slowly - as is the way with opera. Morgan Pearse, as the villainous Enrico is the more menacing for being understated, his singing and acting icily coldhearted and ruthless, resisting the temptation to go for the moustache-twisting dastardliness that can dilute the horror.

José de Eça may be lovely to listen to, but it’s not always clear why this intelligent and resourceful woman is risking everything, including her own sanity, for him - I guess there weren’t exactly many alternatives. Blaise Malaba vests the hypocritical clergyman, Raimondo Bidebent, with a gruesome capacity to suck up to power that serves poor Lucia so badly. She really is hemmed in by a patriarchal conspiracy, culture even, that gives her no place to go.

It’s always a delight to hear the City of London Sinfonia, this time under the baton of Michael Papadopoulos, working more effectively than I can ever recall with the Opera Holland Park Chorus, dressed beautifully by Sades Robinson. The big sound of the chorus heightens the isolation of Lucia’s lone voice as she searches for a friendly face and finds none, backs turned on the woman who will send them into penury.

Lucia di Lammermoor is well established in the canon, not perhaps as gutwrenching as a La bohème or a Madama Butterfly, but perfectly capable of giving you that rush of anger, empathy and sadness that only opera can deliver. Or, and there’s nothing wrong in this, you can take a time out and let that wonderful sound of musicians and singers, hundreds of years of training and experience behind them, transport you to another world, even if the one you’re in is as pleasant as described above.   

A few deep breaths on the walk out of the park and you’re just about ready for another greenhouse trip on the Tube.     

Lucia di Lammermoor is at Opera Holland Park until 1 August

Photo images: Ali Wright