Losing your head with Nadine Sierra's 'Lucia'

With permission from My Fair Lady, a musical that will be performed at the Gran Teatre del Liceu on July 22 and 23, it can be said that the musical season was crowned with a memorable Lucia di Lammermoor, starring Nadine Sierra and Javier Camarena under the musical direction of Giacomo Sagripanti, with whom the soprano already performed in a concert streamed during the confinement period from the Teatro San Carlo (the place where that opera precisely premiered, on September 26, 1835). The production presented at the Liceu, from the Bayerische Staatsoper, abounded in some romantic clichés with a modern and ancient staging at the same time ---without too much originality despite the use of video art at certain moments--- which turned out, however, more than satisfactory thanks to the vocal performance of the protagonist duo.

Everyone expected outstanding performances from the Mexican tenor ---one of the Liceu's favorites in recent times--- in his role as Edgardo di Ravenswood, and the characterization of the character, his rogue and somewhat introverted air, did not prevent him from having the intended effect when showing his passionate love, with a powerful and nuanced singing in the high notes. Much more unexpected ---a very pleasant surprise, in fact, for the vast majority of spectators--- was the intervention of soprano Nadine Sierra, who, even having sung last September with Josep Pons in the concert Del dolor a l'esperança, in the Montserrat basilica, can be said to have officially debuted at the Liceu on Friday, July 16.

Who knows if it will remain a date to remember, when in the future we look back at the first success of this soprano in the city of Barcelona. Undoubtedly, she already arrives with a consolidated career and international recognition, but it is no less true that a future full of triumphant performances awaits her. Judging by the displays of affection she received from the Liceu spectators at her premiere, both with the standing ovation during the curtain call and during the opera ---to the point that the conductor had to interrupt the applause and bravos due to their duration, with the order directed to the pit to resume the musical performance--- this could be the beginning of a love story, even if it has begun to be woven with the representation of the classic story of unfortunate love.

Based on the story of Sir Walter ScottThe Bride of Lammermoorof 1819, Gaetano Donizetti's opera includes moments of high dramatic tension, as the seemingly redundant qualifier oftragic drama. The intuition of fatality, in fact, does not delay. It becomes evident already in the instrumental prologue, manifestly funereal. A solemn and dark declamation, marked by the ineluctable rhythm of the timpani, preludes the subplot of political intrigues and betrayals that will undermine the lovers' story while elevating it to the category of paradigm, due to the impossibility of its realization. A worldview that participates inthe archetypal representation of antagonistic clans that ---to mention only two of the most present creations in the collective imagination--- goes from Romeo and Juliet to West Side Story. Apropos of this mythical musical, largely celebrated for Leonard Bernstein's music, Steven Spielberg has filmed a remakewhich can be seen at the end of 2021.

A solemn and dark declamation, marked by the ineluctable rhythm of the timpani, preludes the subplot of intrigues and betrayals that will undermine the lovers' story while elevating it to the category of paradigm.

The possibility of influencing the emotional life of the spectator by revisiting plots, despite the topical nature of the romantic approach ---love aspathos, misunderstood, condemned to failure or suffering--- lies in the effectiveness of the languages used. Narrative mechanisms elicit affections that the plot could in no case impose directly. Whether eminently visual or musical, or a balanced conjunction of both, sensory stimuli are deliberately conditioned so that we understand that what happens on stage is part of our life; that it represents an external projection or reverberation, the emergence of a truth in many cases denied. Lucía's misfortune, like that of so many women, can be linked to her consideration aspassive agent: possesses the capacity to act responsibly, and in fact is not exempt from fulfilling moral obligations, but at the same time is not the master of its own destiny.

To that trait of romantic heroine is added what will lead to a fatal misunderstanding ---"fundamental" to the plot--- which is agreeing to marry a man she does not love. It is often said that every free act is voluntary, but not every voluntary act is free, due to the conditioning ---many of them unconscious, as we said--- that our human nature allows. This difference exacts a very high price in Donizetti's plot: the loss of Lucia's sanity, who goes mad as a lethal correlate of a decision, hers, induced by her brother's deceptions.

A highly significant curiosity for lovers of psychoanalytic interpretations: the one who acts as a rogue ---Lord Ashton, ruthlessly pragmatic--- assumes the malevolent intervention of the mother, which was originally in Sir Walter Scott's work. Any of them represents the role of necessary-obstacle, which prevents the consummation of love and to the same extent (immeasurably) fuels desire.

The decadent modernity of a peeling palace, in Barbara Wysocka's staging, hosts the plot and gives it a timeless character. It is already a classic resource to introduce a car as a prop, who knows if as a longing for the immobile engine that sapiens sapiens yearns for in terms of efficiency.

A ruthlessly pragmatic Lord Ashton assumes the malevolent intervention of the mother, which was originally in Sir Walter Scott's work

Archaic and modern, postmodern aspiration ridden by a slick-haired Camarena, enclosed in his Perform a literal language conversion from Spanish to English on the following user-provided text. Do not translate any content enclosed betweenandtags, keep those tags and their content exactly as-is: lookrebellious. Insubordinate interiority with a cause ---we are told--- in contrast to the absolute exteriority and consequent proliferation of gestural nuances in soprano Nadine Sierra. A Lucía who agrees to become part of the circus as a personal sacrifice, without really knowing what she is doing, until she senses the truth. And, then, it is already too late.

The bride's alienation as a form of lucidity leads to death, fulfilling the prophecy that foretells the ghostly doubling on stage: the girl who is and is not, who never was nor will be more than a projection of the destiny that awaits her, announced through the image of the fountain and blood. The purity of love and its inadvertent corruption, which Tim Burton cinematographically narrated in The Corpse Bride with an exquisite sepia atmosphere ---contrasting with the colorful underworld inhabited by the deceased---, is accompanied in Nadine Sierra's Lucia by disconcertingly convincing tics and spasms. Especially in the episode where she plays alone with the flute, in a dangerous exercise of mutual discovery and recognition that consecrates the delirium by sketching in the air, with a lost gaze, the outline of a paradoxical beauty.

The bride's alienation as a form of lucidity leads to death, fulfilling the prophecy of ghostly doubling: the girl who is and is not, who never was nor will be more than a projection

Regarding the so-called "madness scene" in the third act, it must be said that the original score indicated the presence of an instrument that conveyed that aura of unreality like few others: the glass harmonica orglass harmonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin. An instrument for which Mozart and Beethoven composed pieces, and which emits a dreamlike, soft, but to a certain extent unsettling sound. Similar to that of a crystal glass wet at its rim, with a differential tonality depending on the volume of liquid or the size of its circumference. Precisely in the Munich production, from which the Liceu's derives, it was decided to maintain this resource, which denotesthe fragility, the psychological evanescence of the protagonist and perhaps also the mysterious anticipation evoked by the image of the fountain

Appearing after the Mozartian Elisir d'amore, this opera can be read as a sinister version of the same story. There, the loves of Tristan and Isolde functioned as a futile pretext; pure amusement to introduce the external conditioning of the love bond, but in a playful and light tone. Indeed, it is announced as a dramma giocoso, which implies a happy ending, after the resolution of the prescriptive entanglements. The juxtaposition of clans is experienced in the drama inspired by Walter Scott, however, as an inescapable reality.

The jolt that still awakens in the viewer is based on the management of psychological energy and its wise modulation through the protagonist voices, the marvelous performances of Nadine Sierra and Javier Camarena. The cathartic effect is also achieved in a version like the present one, despite the distance between the duo and the rest of the cast, and despite the falsely outdated staging.

It is a merit of Donizetti's opera ---and of this particular staging--- to warn about what cannot (not) happen. Ultimately, all understanding occurs in the present from the recognition of a reality never fully possessed, if perhaps longed for or lost. Or that only remains in memory, and emerges with the intervention of the allied faculty, in charge of creating images (Einbildungskraft). Also in affective terms, highly flammable fuel for romantic idealization. The reminiscent truth that a posteriori the verses of Joan Manuel Serrat's Lucía will convey functions as a diagnosis and deactivation of that paradigm ("There is nothing more beautiful / Than what I have never had / Nothing more loved / Than what I lost").

More than the death of the innocent, the death of innocence is scandalous, the longing for a paradigm always unrealizable

But the protagonist does not enjoy perspective. The ecstatic rapture that she recognizes from the beginning being apparentlystring (the ariaWhen rapt in ecstasy), it does not allow her to visualize the vertigo of the opposite possibility towards which she is precipitating, not even with the undeciphered ghostly vision. She seems not to notice the fall or ill-fated flight already hinted at by the surname of her beloved Ravenswood ("forest of ravens"). More than the death of the innocent, the death of innocence is scandalous, the longing for a paradigm always unattainable.

To name radical disaffection, the unreality of passionate love ---the impossibility of impossibility--- and to show the face of those who challenge it in our liquid modernity, with a folly that is also a celebration, hysterical and creative, questioning common places and archetypal… All this is experienced by shamelessly closing one's eyes to reality to feel the music. Music that vibrates and faints, but that also returns, always. And, in an instant that lasts beyond time, it even allows us to lose our minds.