NEW YORK – There was much anticipation, and some worry, over the return of Natalie Dessay to the Metropolitan Opera as the deranged heroine of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.”
The diminutive French soprano had created a sensation in the role on opening night of the 2007-08 season, but vocal problems that have plagued her on and off for much of her career had flared up again recently. Last season, she had canceled her only scheduled Met appearances, as Ophelia in Thomas’ “Hamlet.”
On Thursday night she quickly put any concerns to rest. From the moment she made her first entrance in the woods near Lammermoor Castle, Dessay sang out with secure, bell-like tones and her trademark intense expressiveness. True, the notes at the very top of the role, above high C, seem to cause increasing effort, but there’s compensation in a warmer sound in her middle and lower registers.
Most important, she conveyed the fragile innocence and increasing desperation of a young woman forced by her brother to give up her true love, the rival clansman Edgardo, and marry a nobleman to save the family fortunes.
Lucia’s famous Mad Scene, sung in a bloodstained wedding dress after she kills her bridegroom on their wedding
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