Big, juicy, and quite naughty — ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ is evidence of opera in full swing

On the opening night of Angelo Gobbato’s new interpretation of Gaetano Donizetti’s Italian opera Lucia di Lammermoor, size certainly mattered. The Cape Town Opera production felt monumental, the voices were huge, the scale of the ovation was immense.

There was also the matter of the sizeable erection on the classical illustration of a minotaur that appeared, almost like a holographic statue, during the opening scene. And there was the statement-making bulge — presumably symbolic of uncontainable male lust — in the underpants and down the loose-fitting white trousers of Normanno, played by the accomplished singer, Van Wyk Venter.

Van Wyk Venter as Normanno in Cape Town Opera’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’. (Photo: Fiona MacPherson)

Normanno, usually a secondary role in the opera, has been significantly elevated in Gobbato’s rather audacious production.

“I’ve turned him into the key villain of the piece, the one who has been called to treat people with drugs and other medicines and so he’s representative of the fact that doctors who say they’re practising medicine very often want to take advantage of their patients.”

In this production, in full view of that sexually aroused minotaur projection, the audience witnesses Normanno dropping his pants, evidently intending to assault Lucia sexually, the young woman at the heart of the opera, who is either medically incapacitated, asleep, unconscious, or located somewhere in Normanno’s twisted imagination.

It’s a kind of complete rewiring of the storyline, bringing fascinating new meanings into the opera, which is loosely based on Walter Scott’s 1819 novel, The Bride of Lammermoor.

The entire company of Cape Town Opera’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’. (Photo: Nicky Elliott)

Transforming Normanno into the arch-villain is just one of many considerable twists Gobbato brings to the opera. He’s made it very saucy: during Lucia’s heartfelt aria about romantic longing, for example, her unstifled lust is suggested by a bit tasteful — albeit not very discreet — masturbation.

And Lucia (who is magnificently performed by a luminous Brittany Smith) is also pretty convincing as a seducer. In one scene, she compels her lover, Edgardo, to make love to her before rushing off in order to escape certain death at the hands of his enemies. While resisting Lucia’s charms would usually establish Edgardo as a kind of chaste and heroic romantic lead, here he is instead swayed by desire. Because, of course, this is a contemporary retelling of the story, with a somewhat reconfigured sense of morality, so Lucia and Edgardo’s urges are satisfied before he rushes off to France.

Brittany Smith as Lucia in Cape Town Opera’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’. (Photo: Fiona MacPherson)

The sexual encounter, of course, provides yet more opportunity for Gobbato to add unexpected layers to the storyline. “It means we’ve got a pregnant Lucia,” he says, “which is unusual”.

There is also quite a lot of blood.

“Normally, the blood on stage is used in the famous mad scene, when Lucia murders her husband, Arturo, whom she has been forced to marry against her will,” Gobbato explains. “But we’ve got considerably more blood on the stage. Mostly because of Normanno, who is very jealous of Lucia’s pregnancy and in a fit of rage does something terrible which demands even more blood. I won’t give it away, but it’s not a production of the opera for the squeamish.”

What it is, though, is a big, visionary, somewhat out-the-box show and a kind of full-circle moment for Gobbato who directed Lucia di Lammermoor in the late-1990s as he was helping to establish Africa’s most successful opera company.

Conroy Scott as Enrico in Cape Town Opera’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’. (Photo: Fiona MacPherson)

Back then, Gobatto says, it was a very different time. And the production was an entirely different beast.

“Oh, it’s totally different, totally different,” he says. “In terms of sets and costumes for the previous production, we tried to keep things very simple. A very basic set that we tried to add intrigue to with lighting.”

This production is visually massive. Aside from the full-blown set, it features excellent and imaginative video projections created by Kirstin Cumming. These help transform the stage into alternate spaces, including a forest, and are used to add information, too, such as when the coats of arms for feuding families are projected to help the audience navigate the complexities of the plot’s intrigue.

Lonwabo Mose as Raimondo the priest in Cape Town Opera’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’. (Photo: Fiona MacPherson)

And while there’s a practical dimension to these projections, they’re also used to cleave psychological depth into the storyline, as if we are witnessing something out of a David Lynch movie, like surreal inner landscapes. And, in more prosaic moments, there are renderings of social media posts that add another kind of significance to the enormous tragedy that befalls Lucia.

The most significant difference between this and his previous production, though, Gobbato says, is that back in the ’90s the lead singers were imported. “We had a Ukrainian soprano playing Lucia and an Italian tenor as Edgardo. But in this production, I think we’ve got just one white person in the chorus — and everyone in the cast is local.”

Lukhanyo Moyake as Edgardo, Lucia’s lover, in Cape Town Opera’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’. (Photo: Fiona MacPherson)

This is an incredible representation of the work done both by UCT’s Opera School, where Gobbato is a professor and by Cape Town Opera, which has spent 25 years developing local singing talent.

And that talent, as this production attests, is something furious.

The voices are never less than exquisite, managing to slice through the melodrama, the madness, the sexual angst, the jealousy, the threat of violence, the systemic misogyny of the patriarchal characters, the bullying and manipulation, and the rather Gothic and shocking bloodletting that ultimately follows.

The entire company of Cape Town Opera’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’. (Photo: Fiona MacPherson)

Smith, who is faultless as Lucia, a woman driven to madness by the conniving antics of the wretched men around her, is an absolute rock star, not only captivating in voice but compelling as an actress. Her descent from being madly in love to being traumatised and shell-shocked is utterly heartbreaking and quite convincing.

And there is the fiery energy of Conroy Scott as Lucia’s plot-hatching, drugged-up brother, willing to sell his sister to the highest bidder to save his impoverished backside. As always, he’s a commanding force on stage, that voice barrelling out of him absolutely demanding that you pay attention.

Van Wyk Venter as Normanno and Brittany Smith as Lucia in Cape Town Opera’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’. (Photo: Fiona MacPherson)

Gobatto’s staging, while not without its flaws, is certainly imaginative. And, occasionally, it’s a bit all over the place. There are scenes, for example where guns are pulled out and in response to the threat, a bunch of slouchy bodyguards in the chorus whip out their short swords. The result is a kind of absurd stand-off that visually and logically doesn’t quite make sense. If the idea of these scenes is to convince us that the on-stage threat is real, it doesn’t quite work.

These minor errors in judgment are perhaps simply because Gobatto’s frames of reference are too wide-ranging. He has knotted together so many threads and dared to incorporate so many deviations from the norm, so many riffs and experiments within the storyline, that it is perhaps to be expected that not all of them can land with equal success.

Brittany Smith as Lucia and Lukhanyo Moyake as Edgardo in Cape Town Opera’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’. (Photo: Fiona MacPherson)

What is a great success, though, and immensely enjoyable, is that he has refashioned a well-known tale into a more deeply layered story about a woman ultimately destroyed by greedy, selfish, manipulative men. And, in the process, he has crafted a highly-entertaining, deeply energetic and frankly spine-tingling production. DM

Lucia di Lammermoor plays at Cape Town’s Artscape Opera until 23 June. It transfers to the Joburg Theatre on 25 July for a limited season.