Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor (“Mad Scene”)

The “mad scene” in Lucia di Lammermoor ranks as one of the most famous scenes in opera.

A short synopsis will explain the situation. Lucia is in love with Edgardo, but their families are engaged in a feud. While Edgardo is abroad, Lucia’s brother Enrico arranges for Lucia to marry another. He forges a letter to convince Lucia that Edgardo has abandoned her. Lucia marries the unfortunate other man and stabs him on their wedding night. Lucia then descends the stairs carrying the bloody knife and sings about the sweet sound of Edgardo’s voice, Il dolce suono, as she imagines that she and Edgardo are about to be married.

As drastic as the circumstances are, Lucia’s mad scene presents basically an extended bel canto aria. The aria in the bel canto (beautiful singing) style, prevalent across Europe in the 19th century, offers the soprano a chance to display both her virtuosity and stamina. This aria is all the more famous because it is cast as a duet with the flute and demands that both the singer and the flautist be in perfect sync—not an easy achievement when we remember that the person playing the flute is seated down in the orchestra pit.

Mad scenes were not a new dramatic device when Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) wrote Lucia di Lammermoor in 1835. Shakespeare had produced some famous ones using the characters of Lady Macbeth (Macbeth) and Ophelia (Hamlet)—but the public had a renewed fascination with them in the Romantic era. In the aftermath of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, society’s confidence in the rational and orderly world of the 18th-century Enlightenment was shattered, and they turned instead to spooky themes, the supernatural, and psychological probing. Think of novels like Frankenstein (1818) and the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.

Lucia became a signature role for the acclaimed Australian soprano Joan Sutherland (1926-2010), featured in this performance. The role continues to be one of opera’s most outstanding and demanding.