Met resets Lucia in America’s rustbelt
NewsFirst pictures from Simon Stone’s upcoming production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, based on a 19th century Scottish novel, shows soprano Nadine Sierra lounging outside a pawn shop in a drug-ridden nowhere town.
She tells AP:
“There’s a portion of this Lucia I absolutely get,” she said in an interview. Growing up in “not the most glitzy” neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, she recalls being bullied in school and getting into a series of emotionally abusive relationships with men in her early 20s.
“I feel as if I’m playing myself,” in this production, she said. “How I would react to the way Lucia has to live her life.”
The production opens on Saturday.
Photo: Zenith Richards/Metropolitan Opera via AP
What’s going on with these new age “artists” who can’t do a performance unless they feel they are playing themselves? Why is lack of imagination something to be proud of? Why do opera houses shove such productions and “artists” down the public’s throat? Please note she says she feels like _playing_ herself. Not singing but playing. Lucia is a _belcanto_ opera, for pity’s sake. So what’s in store for the Met? Why, it’s Nadine in a flimsy dress not wearing a bra, with a neckline down to her navel. This is her basic outfit in everything. Her concerts must paying a pittance and bras must be very expensive in Fort Lauderdale 😉 Who has artistic imagination and can sing, sings. Who can’t, displays their physical assets.
This is garden variety narcissism.
“Look, it is not about music, (whose humble servant I should be), it is all about me.
Lucia, by definition, is an unstable young woman, unhinged by being forced into a loveless marriage. She is already hallucinating in act one, so her mad scene in act three is no surprise, it is dramatically believable.
It is a new fashion for artists to bare their all in social media. Does Ms.Sierra now confess to being delusional and capable of fatal stabbing? I suppose, one way to deal with stress is to unleash torrents of coloratura, provided one has the chops and the technique.
Because nothing says bel canto quite like a pawn shop …
And a late 16th century Scottish castle does say “bel canto” to you? Or a Roman military camp with some druids thrown in? Or the attempts of an 18th century Spanish doctor to marry his ward, thwarted by a barber, of all people??
If any of these sound like a natural bel canto setting to you, so can a pawn shop.
Typical Simon Stone garbage.
Just watched the Met videos of this producer talking about his “Konzept”. another verbal masturbator who has conned another Management into thinking they’re getting something new, original or has something new to say about the work. Spies tell me that the production team are clueless and both chorus and backstage staff think they’re a bunch of amateurs taking the proverbial.
Another one to miss. The savings account is looking better and better, thanks to all the skipped Regietrash. I am playing Dame Joan’s sublime Lucia from the Met of yesteryear, in protest.
Not the Dalrymples and the Rutherfords but the Harfields and the McCoys.
Yee-haw!
This Stone was the one who, last Summer in Aix, put Act 3 of Tristan in a subway car on the Paris Metro. Projections in the back allowed you to see the progress of the car through the stations of the Metro. And in every station Kurwenal had to lean out to see if Isolde was on the platform.
I’m not making this up.
Killing imagination in the name of “art”
fArt
Just looked at the two local venues that are streaming this;
Venue A, 200 seats 8 booked
Venue B, 32 seats 2 booked.
This steamed event has been advertised for several months if tickets are have not been sold already with this news I suspect not many more will be.
The worry is that if there is a poor uptake then the venues may consider whether it is worth their while to continue showing opera.