Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor premieres at the Mariinsky II on 29 December. The new production is prepared by an Italian team that has already staged Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra and Falstaff at the Mariinsky Theatre. The team includes Andrea De Rosa (Stage Director), Simone Mannino (Production Designer), Alessandro Lai (Costume Designer), and Pasquale Mari (Lighting and Video Designer). Music Director and Conductor: Valery Gergiev.
Roles are being rehearsed by Albina Shagimuratova, Olga Pudova, Aigul Khismatullina (Lucia); Sergei Skorokhodov, Migran Agadzhanyan, Yevgeny Akimov (Sir Edgar Ravenswood); Alexei Markov, Vladislav Sulimsky, Roman Burdenko, Vladimir Moroz (Lord Henry Ashton); Vladimir Feliauer, Stanislav Trofimov, Vadim Kravets (Raymond Bidebent).
Costume designer Alessandro Lai has shared some inside information about the upcoming premiere: “Our production is set in the first decades of the 20th century. I and stage director Andrea De Rosa were inspired by two things of great importance to us both: Italian paintings of the first half of the 20th century (Giorgio de Chirico, Antonio Donghi, Felice Casorati) and films by Alfred Hitchcock, especially Spellbound filmed in collaboration with Salvador Dali. The production is designed in black and white, as if it is a daguerreotype, a picture of the epoch or an image from Hitchcock’s film. The only other colour in the production is the colour of blood. The key to the production design is Lucia’s wedding dress. There will be a straitjacket instead of it. What was supposed to be the most desirable and beautiful gown for a woman turns into an instrument of violence.”
The world premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor based on Salvatore Cammarano’s libretto and Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Bride of Lammermoor took place at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples on 26 September 1835 and was met with roaring success. The opera has never fallen into oblivion; it regularly appears on theatre playbills all over the world. The opera was performed by both Imperial companies – Russian and Italian – more than 200 times over several decades in the 19th century St Petersburg.
The current production is the Mariinsky Theatre’s third adaptation of Lucia di Lammermoor in the last 18 years. The 2000 production was staged by David Doiashvili and conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, while the 2009 production at the Historic Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre was actually a production created for Scottish Opera by the Tony Award-winning stage director John Doyle, who is famous for his Broadway productions. The new production will also be performed at the Mariinsky II on 30 December, 4 January, and 27 January (at 14.00 and at 19.30).
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