THE TRUTH ABOUT MADNESS

The truth about madness according to Belgian director Gilbert Deflo, in charge of staging "Lucia di Lammermoor” by Gaetano Donizetti

(libretto)

In Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, rightly considered to be a masterpiece of melodrama, all the typical elements of Romanticism are present: contested and impossible love, the irreconcilable rivalry between families, separation by fraud, arranged marriage, uxoricide, delirium, madness and lastly death in the haunted atmosphere of a dramatic crescendo. “The cycle of hate and vengeance is a recurrent theme in 19th Century melodrama, - according to Gilbert Deflo’s director’s notes, who is to stage the opera at Le Muse on 26th November, - and represents the eternal return. The fatal effects of the male world on the female soul find an emblematic incarnation in the figure of Lucia, who reacts with the only contraposition she knows of: the abandonment of body and soul.

In this first half of the 19th Century, - explains the Belgian director, - the opera deals with a theme that describes mental disorder not as the result of external factors (spirits or ghosts) but as the physical disturbance born in concrete family and social settings”.

The lyrics in the libretto by Salvatore Cammarano are inspired in terms of plot by Walter Scott’s “The Bride of Lammermoor” which a number of other opera composers had referred to without ever attaining the artistic grandeur of the Donizetti-Cammarano duo. Lucia (Patrizia Ciofi) and Edgardo (Aquiles Machado) love each other, but belong to two rival families. By fraud, Enrico (Alberto Mastromarino) arranges for his sister to marry Arturo (Cristiano Olivieri). Lucia discovers the truth, goes mad with the pain, kills her husband and then dies. Arturo stabs himself to death to join his beloved in death. 

“Let us take a closer look at the men surrounding Lucia - invites Deflo -. For Enrico, his sister is merely a means to regain his wavering power and restore splendour to the family coat of arms (“de miei destini impallidì la stella”). He is sided by Normanno, the contemptible executor of his despicable machinations. Due to the ancestral hatred that opposes the two families, Edgardo, the romantic lover, renounces the forgiveness granted beforehand to subject Lucia’s spirit to true terror, announcing that the vow of vengeance has not been broken (“M’odi e trema”): when he returns his ring, a pledge to their eternal love (“tempio ed ara è un core amante”), Lucia’s fate is settled forever.

Raimondo, in his capacity as spiritual father and educator, should assist Lucia, offering her his understanding and support, but in fact he is the one to push her definitively over the edge: because religious terror is a relentless theme (“I nuziali voti che il ministro di Dio non benedice, né il ciel, né il mondo riconosce”). That relentless sky, that world of conveniences does not give Lucia the slightest chance: the family as a sacred value (“la madre, nell’avello, fremerà per te d’orror”) shatters her spirit. The sky beneath which Lucia can breathe is of another nature: it is the illusion of the only love that cannot be sold or divided. The only true altar is that in her heart. The last male figure, Arturo, does not have a very developed psychological dimension. He is in fact used more as a catalyst for the final dénouement”.

The entire opera can be considered to be a musical portrait of the fragile and pain stricken female figure, in a passage of states of mind featuring touching and tormenting accents, underlined by the sound of the harp for the hopes of love, by the oboe in the conversation between Lucia and her brother Enrico, by the violoncellos as Lucia enters the room where the loathed nuptials take place, by the high register of the flute that accompanies her escape into the madness of delirium and hallucinations (In the production in Ancona, the Marche Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Keri-Lynn Wilson, the V. Bellini opera choir is conducted by Claudio Morganti, the scenes and costumes are the work of William Orlandi).

“Lucia sings, and I see the song as the ideal means of aesthetic transposition in the sublime, with its lyrical effusions of wonder and of pain. How can the director - asks Gilbert Deflo - focus the work of the actor-singer so that he can give life to such a pathology? How can he find the facial expressions, the correct attitudes and the right gestures?

The first descriptions of the way moods produce specific psychological effects date back to the 17th Century: Le Brun’s panels (the painter of the Palace of Versailles, editor’s note) offer prolific and fascinating material, that guides the director in his research for the level of interpretation of Baroque drama. Two centuries later, Charcot’s iconography (the French doctor famous for his studies on nervous illnesses, editor’s note) provides some models of theatrical action that can be applied magnificently to Lucia: the repertoire includes fear, terror, delirium and passionate behaviour.

By placing “Lucia di Lammermoor” at the time of its creation, in that bourgeois 19th Century, I wanted this madness to live in a truthful manner, transforming the pretence of the opera into a real occurrence”.