Connectincut Opera Lucia di Lammermoor Reviews
(First night, 02 November 2003)
Strong Voices Propel `Lucia’
March 27, 2004
By JON LENDER, Courant Staff Writer
Audiences sometimes gripe about a lack of innovation in the staging of operatic chestnuts such as «Lucia di Lammermoor» – and they will certainly find none of it in Connecticut Opera’s current straight-ahead production of the classic Donizetti work.
But, honestly, who needs that stuff when you’ve got the voices?
That’s exactly what artistic director and conductor Willie Anthony Waters has in three of his four main singers, at least – judging by Thursday night’s very good rendering in the first of three scheduled performances at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford:
As the doomed heroine Lucia, soprano Eteri Lamoris easily handled the gymnastics of Donizetti’s demanding, decorative bel canto flights of melody. Small person, big voice. At times in the first act she seemed uncertain about producing some delicate notes and sang them with a greater vibrato and volume than perhaps necessary. But that disappeared in Acts 2 and 3.
Her Mad Scene was a memorable – more internal than outwardly manic – depiction of deranged despair. Lamoris tended occasionally to gather herself for big notes, the high Cs and Ds, before belting them with a near-athleticism. It was almost «Here it comes!» – instead of a natural flow into them. But, oh, did she hit the notes.
