The singer’s giddiness, combined with her vocal discipline, barely grazed her character’s desperation, and the evening’s most compelling emotion came at curtain call, when she pumped her fists as if she had sunk a hole in one. Dessay, undaunted, turned in a vocal performance of lucidly plotted insanity: silvery, graceful, and extravagant.ĭessay considers herself an actress first, but here she overwhelmed her thespian subtleties in a gale of clutchings and gaspings that would have made Sarah Bernhardt blush. In the crucial mad scene, the orchestra practically abandons her, making the voice sound fragile and alone in that big, thick silence. A good Lucia depends on a superb Lucia-a singer who can sprinkle the air with notes that seem to have drifted from her love-ravaged brain. On this night, both she and her voice were vigorous and lithe-the one springing to her feet with a giggle after tripping on an overlong gown, the other missing nary a semiquaver, scudding and gliding on currents of turbulent melody. She has deserved divadom for a while, though she has also suffered from vocal afflictions that threatened to end her career. The Met used the occasion to anoint a fresh star, the petite French soprano Natalie Dessay, whose zombie eyes have been gazing undeadly from bus-stop posters for the last several weeks, advertising a new production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. This year’s opening night at the opera doubled as the first anniversary of the Met’s metamorphosis, and general manager Peter Gelb delivered what he had promised: glamour, including representatives from Hollywood’s intellectual wing a popular outdoor festival with broadcasts to Times Square and Lincoln Center plaza a production that was lively to the point of hysteria and singing that bordered on stunning. Photo: Ken Howard/courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera
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