Lucia di Lammermoor, The Metropolitan Opera

Oct 6, 2008

” ‘Lucia’ lovers are in luck at the Metropolitan Opera these days. Astonishingly, Friday night’s revival marked the first time Diana Damrau, a German lyric coloratura, had ever sung the role. Yet she immediately made it her own, with a combination of splendid vocalism and keen dramatic insight… Damrau portrays a sturdier young woman happily in love with a neighboring squire, Edgardo, until she is tricked into thinking he has abandoned her. Her singing is likewise robust at the beginning, with house-filling high notes and expert ornamentation. But it’s no mere exercise of vocal fireworks; there’s a wonderful expressiveness in the way she modulates her tone and shapes the melodic line to fit the emotional moment. Later, in opera’s most famous mad scene, she falls apart before our eyes, exploding in anger one moment, then floating mournful phrases that seem to hang in the air.”

Mike Silverman, Associated Press Writer, Oct 4, 2008

“A Scottish Castle, ruled by a Soprano… Ms Damrau dispatched the passage work, trills and top notes with aplomp. Her sound was warm, plush and clear. This frenetic Lucia, who sees ghosts and acts rashly, already seemed to be emotionally fragile. As Ms. Damrau played the daunting mad scene, the unhinged young woman, having stabbed to death the man she was forced to marry – the well-meaning Lord Arturo – was not vacant-eyed and spectral , like many Lucias. INstead she was fidgety and manic, all spastic bodily gestures as she lurched about the ball-room of Lammermoor castle before the horrified wedding-guests. She was like VivienLeigh’s broken-down, jebbering yet still flirtatious Blanche DuBois in the final scene of “A Streetcar Named Desire”. That Ms. Damrau executed the scene’s spiraling vocal roulades sp accurately and held sustained high notes with such penetrating steadiness lent a quality of eerie control to Lucia’s madness. And her gleaming top notes filled the house… it was Damrau’s night. During the rousing final ovation she took to the stage like a rock star, looking exultant.”

The NY Times, Oct 6, 2008