Two performances of Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor next week bring back to the Manoel Theatre stage a masterpiece which has never waned in popularity, neither here nor abroad since its sensationally successful premiere in Naples on September 26, 1835.
The Bergamasque composer Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) wrote 64 operas and left an unfinished one (Le Duc d’Albe) before ill-health immobilised him for the last five years of his life. He wrote operas in every genre and Lucia di Lammermoor was his 46th and is the most popular of his serious stage works. Together with his comic operas L’elisir d’amore (1832) and Don Pasquale (1842), they are his most frequently performed operas.
Lucia di Lammermoor will delight opera buffs in a production by the Silesian National Opera from the city of Opava in the Czech Republic.
Opava’s opera house has a 200-year tradition behind it, founded especially so as to diffuse opera in what was left to the Habsburg Empire of the province of Silesia gobbled up by Prussia in 1740. It remained part of that empire until 1918 and has since been one of the leading opera houses of the Czech people.
The good news is that this particular production of Lucia di Lammermoor won the prestigious Thalia Prize in 2005, under the musical direction of Damiano Binetti and artistic director Jana Andelova Pletichova. Both will respectively conduct and direct the performances at the Manoel Theatre.
The same soprano who first sang the title role in this award-winning production, Katarina Jorda Kramolisova, will be singing it in Malta as well. Others taking part in the performances are Korean tenor Kim Kisun in the role of Lucia’s lover Edgardo of Ravenswood; baritone Jakob Kettner as Enrico Ashton, Lucia’s ruthless and ambitious brother; bass Dalibor Hrda as Bide-the-bent (also known as Raimondo), the Presbyterian minister; tenor Michal Pavel Vojta as the hapless Sir Arturo Bucklaw, Lucia’s husband whom she kills during their wedding night and soprano Ilona Kaplova as Alisa, Lucia’s confidante.
Conductor, artistic director, the cast and the experienced members of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra will perform this great work on Thursday and Saturday, March 19.
• Tickets may be obtained from the Manoel Theatre booking office by phone on 2124 6389, by e-mail: bookings@teatrumanoel.com.mt or online: www.teatrumanoel.com.mt.