As was so often the case, Donizetti composed Lucia di Lammermoor in the record time of just a few weeks. Nevertheless, with this opera he created one of the most important and popular masterpieces of Italian romantic opera. Lucia di Lammermoor flourishes not only because of its melodic richness and its characters drawn concisely through the music; Donizetti skillfully softened the prescribed rigid structures of bel canto opera and placed his protagonists Lucia-Edgardo-Enrico in the emotional triangle of love, hate and passion. The opera was part of the core repertoire at the Wiener Staatsoper until 1926 and then again from 1978, offering generations of singers the possibility of proving themselves in the ultimate art of bel canto.
In Laurent Pelly’s dream-like staging of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, one of the most important bel canto works of all time, a top vocal cast shines at the Wiener Staatsoper. When the phenomenal Olga Peretyatko shows the gripping downfall of Lucia, “music and theatre merge into an explosive mixture” (Wiener Zeitung). Juan Diego Flórez, the bel canto superstar, is “probably the world’s best Edgardo” (Kronenzeitung). George Petean joins them as Enrico in the emotional triangle of love, hate and passion. With Evelino Pidò on the rostrum, the orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper excels under this “ideal master of bel canto music” (Die Presse).
