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I’m Not Cross, I’m Mad! London
Opera Holland Park
07/18/2025 - & July 22, 24*, 26, 30, August 1, 2025
Gaetano Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor
Jennifer France (Lucia), Morgan Pearse (Lord Enrico Ashton), José de Eça (Sir Edgardo di Ravenswood), Joseph Buckmaster (Lord Arturo Bucklaw), Blaise Malaba (Raimondo Bidebent), Charlotte Badham (Alisa), David Webb (Normanno)
Opera Holland Park Chorus, Dominic Ellis‑Peckham (chorus master), City of London Sinfonia, Michael Papadopoulos (conductor)
Cecilia Stinton (director), Tim van ‘t Hof (lighting designer), Neil Irish (designer), William Byram (movement director)
J. France (© Pablo Strong)
The stage at Holland Park runs along a facade of Holland House, a Jacobean mansion that was largely decimated during the Blitz, and the audience sits under a weatherproof canopy facing it. For a director it must be a nightmare as it is all width and no depth, though to increase the latter the orchestra sits in a shallow pit in the middle of the stage, allowing an extended acting area in front of it; but in turn that means that the action has to work around the players. Imagine a wide catwalk with an orchestra in the middle. It works well for a panorama, but if you’re not careful you can end up staging a tennis match with audience heads swivelling from side to side. Some directors give up and focus the action with a set: Cecilia Stinton embraced the problem and used the full breadth of the stage. Lucia is essentially a domestic story, and she successfully kept focus on the right people at the right time, whilst using the wider space to show the Ashton household at both work and play. The setting was time of composition, 1835, and otherwise traditional. A late Georgian/early Victorian staging seems to be the trend in London recently, with Katie Mitchell’s production at Covent Garden and David Alden’s at ENO (now used in Madrid) preceding Stinton’s.
With the good comes the not so good. The chorus blocking was clumsy – people really don’t move en masse and strike attitudes, and there were stagey moments aplenty, starting with Normanno perched atop a stepladder mid-stage for no reason other than to elevate the singer above the chorus. When Lucia claimed to have seen a ghost she was just teasing Alisa and giving her the jitters, but the apparition then popped up several times, gliding distractingly around the stage and through the audience. Stinton made use of the back area of the stage, used generally for Lammermoor Castle; and the front area, containing graves, was a portent of things to come. Why did Raimondo wander in from the wings to announce Lucia’s madness when the girl herself appeared melodramatically in the doorway of Holland House in the middle of the stage? Did she know a short cut? Sometimes it would have been good if the singers had moved forwards more often; the sextet would have been effective if they had been ranged directly in front of us, but perhaps placing everyone behind the orchestra meant that they could keep an eye on the conductor. Its conclusion wasn’t helped by the sudden loud announcement of a twenty minute interval, the problem being that Act II hadn’t actually finished, (not that it bothered the woman sitting next to me as she trampled me en route to the bar in a new land speed record. As Edgardo threw the strop of all strops she was probably on her second G&T).
Michael Papadopoulos conducted with care and the City of London Sinfonia played beautifully, the brass having a great night, and the harp and flute supporting their Lucia with grace. The chorus worked hard and sang lustily. The edition was traditional; Enrico lost a verse of his cabaletta, Lucia retained all of her repeats. But it was all very measured. I don’t think I’ve heard a “Spargi d’amaro il pianto” that was slower than the preceding “Il dolce suono” – in fact both of Lucia’s cabalettas lagged. The ponderous pace and lack of rubato didn’t build tension, in fact quite the opposite, and the soprano’s decorations lost their brilliance and flashes of madness. I admit that I started to plan my weekend’s menus.
Jennifer France worked hard as Lucia, especially in delineating her descent from skittish girl to traumatised bride, obviously sexually assaulted by Arturo. Vocally, this was an old‑fashioned small‑scale Lucia in the mould of Toti Dal Monte and Lina Pagliughi, rather than the more dramatic coloratura voices of Callas, Sutherland and their successors who have dominated the role since the War. France’s soprano at its best is sweet, but Lucia is a massive role and a lot of the time the voice was pushed and became metallic. France displayed all the high notes with aplomb, but her trill is hazy and generally she didn’t get the chance to dazzle with her coloratura until the Mad Scene, when she could set her own pace most of the time and things picked up dramatically. She didn’t particularly relish the text.
Tenor José de Eça was a strong Edgardo, with a smooth lyric tone that rang excitingly when necessary. There is an attractive dark, almost veiled quality to the voice, intrinsic to the tone, not a fault. He is a sincere actor and certainly spat his more emotional lines out with venom. In his final moments, set appropriately amidst the graves (so many tenors die vocally at this stage) he sang between a whisper and full flood, and I am not sure whether it was necessity or an artistic choice: if the latter, it was too veristic.
Morgan Pearse sang a strong Enrico, his baritone is firm and resonant, but he, or Stinton, didn’t have much to say about the role. Lammermoor Castle looked quite comfortable – one man’s penury is another’s luxury, it’s all relative – and apart from wandering round clutching a Champagne bottle to signify his new‑found wealth and lack of sensitivity he wasn’t given much to do. His relationship with his sister, surely coercion at its worst, remained unexplored. Blaise Malaba was an excellent Raimondo, smooth of tone, but once again, not overly directed. He came across as genial: isn’t there something sinister to be probed in his role in Lucia’s downfall? Joseph Buckmaster and David Webb were solid tenors as Arturo and Normanno, and Charlotte Badham’s mezzo had opulence as Alisa – I will look out for her again, hopefully in a larger role.
Francis Muzzu
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