12 days until the Lucia di Lammermoor premiere!

The story of Lucia is more strongly focused on the title heroine than most other operas. She really carries the piece. Still, Lucia is no larger-than-life character like Turandot or Isolde, or even Tosca. “She doesn’t necessarily stand for much other than what she is,” Mary Zimmerman explains, “a sensitive and frail, rather helpless and, I think, quite romantic girl, who’s rolled over and crushed by her circumstances.”

One of the recurring visual elements of Daniel Ostling’s set design that reflects the character’s state of mind is the image of trees. “We were struck by those very intricate tree branches we saw in Scotland,” Zimmerman says. “When they’re bare in winter, they bear a striking resemblance to the human vascular system in the brain or the nervous system, which in Lucia’s case is broken.”

A set of show curtains featuring these branches, pictured here, suggests Lucia’s psychological imbalance, just one of the production’s elements that underscores the character’s unstable behavior.

This entry was posted by Philipp Brieler on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 7:21 am and is filed under New Production Countdown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.