Background Notes
In the wake of Rossini's retirement and Bellini's death only three days before its premiere, Lucia di Lammermoor is the work that catapulted Donizetti's international recognition as a composer of first rank. Quickly staged in Vienna , Madrid , Paris , London , New Orleans and New York , Lucia has survived the test of time, and unlike many of its bel canto siblings, has never fallen out of the international repertory.
The novels of Sir Walter Scott were readily taken up by Romantic composers ? in fact, he's among the top ten authors whose novels have received operatic treatment. The Bride of Lammermoor had already been set several times before Donizetti got his hands on it. To condense the rather lengthy book into a usable form, he and his librettist, Salvadore Cammarano, likely used for guidance Michele Carafa's opera, Le nozze di Lammermoor , which premiered in Paris just six years before. Carafa had reduced the character list substantially, a gesture Donizetti and Cammarano took further by telescoping Lucy Ashton's mother, father, and two brothers into a single adversary, Enrico. Among the 20 or so others to go were Edgardo's chattering, yet good-natured, valet, Caleb Balderstone, and Craigengelt, a not-so-well intentioned sea captain with a hidden agenda. Normanno is retained (inspired by Norman the parksman), as is the good-intentioned Reverend Bide-the-Bent (renamed Raimondo), and Frank Hayston, Lord of Bucklaw survives reasonably intact as Arturo. Blind Alice, an old hermitic woman with second sight and mystical ways, is turned into Alisa, Lucia's rather opaque confidante. The story's final moments had to be fixed as well. Edgar's mysterious disappearance (presumably by quicksand) on his way to a duel with Lucy's brother Sholto was transformed into a grand suicide scene at the tomb of the Ravenswoods, a bit more appropriate to the tastes of early 19 th -century Neapolitans.
Forbidden desire, family rivalry, the death of two lovers, it all smacks of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Yet, though the Bard was popular among Romantic writers, Scott's tale was inspired by an actual event, the marriage of Janet Dalrymple and David Dunbar. The unfolding of their story is entrenched in the politics of the day. Seventeenth-century England and Scotland were embroiled in their own civil war over the question of faith. The face-off was within James II's family, James being staunchly Catholic, his daughters being committed to Protestantism. Though each daughter ruled in turn as Mary II and Anne I, exiled descendants from James's second marriage always posed a Catholic threat.
The political turmoil afforded the rise of one William Dalrymple, who through legal trickery and political opportunism acquired vast estates and a peerage. His wife, the notorious Dame Margaret Ross Dalrymple, was even more ambitious. To further improve their lot, she chose the perfect husband for her daughter. Unfortunately he was not the one she loved, a certain Lord Rutherford, who, though from solid stock, was regarded by mother Dalrymple as yesterday's news. The couple secretly had pledged their fidelity by splitting a gold coin, a token the mother, in a heated argument with Rutherford, demanded to be returned upon Janet's betrothal to Dunbar .
The incident of their wedding night is relayed in both novel and opera, yet there is a hint of mystery to the actual events. The couple was locked in the bridal chamber by the best man (as custom prescribed), but while the guests continued the party, shrieks were heard from within. Inside was found a critically wounded Dunbar with Janet, cowering in the corner, supposedly howling ?Tak' your bonny bridegroom.? Dunbar survived his injuries (as he does in Scott's novel) and amazingly remained with his bride for another two weeks, after which she died from her mental defect. He was tight-lipped about the whole affair, threatening to duel any man who dared broach the subject. It was suspected that Rutherford had somehow entered the bridal chamber and had executed the bloody deed himself.
Scott was careful to change the names and move the locale. A major variant was to have Lucy's lover, Edgar Ravenswood, be the sole survivor of a family ruined by her father. He also invented the event of their first meeting, she and her father are saved from a rushing bull by Edgar, then taken to the craggy remnants of his estate (a sparsely furnished tower on an ocean cliff) to escape a brewing storm. Edgar is still agitated about the dispossession of his family and his father's dying wish to wreck havoc on the Ashtons, but his anger is somehow tempered by Lucy's grace and beauty. Sir William warms to the young man, and things may have turned out okay if it were not for the mother, Lady Margaret Douglas Ashton, an especially shrewish woman. She dominates the novel in a singular plight to keep the lovers apart and to arrange a marriage of her choosing. Sadly, something of her daunting, imperious nature is lost in the composite character of the opera's Enrico. Also lost is much of the novel's gothic flavor, the macabre character of Old Alice (and later, her ghost), the three village hags, whose lunacy set the tone for Lucy's eventual mental breakdown, and the wispy disappearance of Edgar while riding on horseback to duel Lucy's brother Sholto. Scott's novel is chock full of gothic themes ? persecution, disinheritance, ancestral curses, and though his descriptiveness borders on ponderous and overblown, his imagery is pregnant with meaning ? the sexual innuendo inherent in Lucy's encounter with the wild bull, the raven shot dead at Lucy's feet (splattering her white dress with blood) moments after her secret betrothal to Edgar, a fountain-murder myth where a nymph is destroyed as a result of her lover's lack of faith, and the omnipresent fatalism of the three old women (presumably a reference to the fate-weaving Norns of Norse mythology). Scott's novel is a surprising example of feminine will, from the heady domination of Lady Ashton's iron grasp over the family to Lucy's ability to lash out with bloody vengeance when left with no other recourse.
Donizetti and Cammarano were still careful to include a few stylish elements, a ghostly presence, a storm and, of course, Lucia's famously popular mad scene. Both works have that brooding flavor indigenous to Romanticism ? darkly morose, rather unsympathetic individuals, under the control of more sinister forces, who can do nothing but rant and rave ? traits not found in the drama's parallel journey as one of ?star-crossed love.? Where Shakespeare offers his protagonists optimism and a plan for escape (though ultimately foiled by poor timing), there is no such hope for Lucia and Edgardo, their doleful path is trod by misery and madness to an especially horrific end.
Courtesy of Minnesota Opera
