Conducted by Patrick Fournillier; directed by Graham Vick; Stefania Bonfadelli, Marcelo Alvarez (Edgardo) and Roberto Frontali (Enrico). Genoa 2003

Enrico (Ashton), Lucia’s brother, in due course feels guilty that he is using his sister for his own ends – to preserve the family estate against its previous owners (the Ravenswoods), and expresses profound remorse at the forced marriage he has arranged for her.

Edgardo (Ravenswood) is a romantic hero in the invidious position of wooing the heiress (Lucia) of the family which has usurped his own family’s land and home. However, there is never a suggestion that he is using her or that there is anything but romantic love between them.

Raimondo (the local chaplain), Lucia’s tutor and confidant, is a treacherous prig. Enrico’s servant, Normanno, tells his master of his sister’s affair with Edgardo, but Raimondo plays a more sordid role. He lyingly tells Lucia that he had a letter from her to Edgardo delivered by a trustworthy hand. The fact that this letter to her lover remains unanswered makes Lucia yield, against her feelings, to her brother’s wish for her to marry his friend, the wealthy Sir Arthur Bucklaw, so saving the Ashton family estate, which once belonged to the Ravenswoods. In this production, Sir Arthur (Cristiano Olivieri) is middle aged, dressed in pristine white, and struggles with his voice and aria.

Marcolo Alvarez (Edgardo) has a voice heroic and emotionally expressive. Stefania Bonfadelli’s Lucia concentrates to good effect on her extraordinary voice production. Her coloratura has a crystal quality but is also warm and human. Her eyes are remarkable; she speaks with them as with her voice, thus portraying the kind of highly sensitive and high-strung young woman who might well break down into madness when confronted with a forced marriage.

This opera should not be confined to the category of ‘bel canto’. It is an intensely romantic and lyrical work whose two parts are only unbalanced dramatically by the destruction of romantic love and Lucia’s ensuing insanity, after she has killed her putative husband. This madness is itself matched by her lover Edgardo’s own suicidal delirium. In the vocabulary of opera – of this opera – the lovers are united, in heaven or hell, according to taste.