"Heaven and earth have betrayed me! I would like to cry but I cannot… Even tears have abandoned me!"  

Lucia, Acte II, scène 6

Every morning at dawn, in the Lammermuir hills in Southern Scotland, the beautiful Lucia meets Edgardo of Ravenswood, a mysterious young man with whom she is in love. However, just as in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the lovers are the progeny of two feuding families and do not have the right to love each other. The true story of Janet Dalrymple – who murdered her husband on her wedding night and subsequently paid for it with her sanity – had already inspired a novel by Walter Scott. Donizetti picked up the story and Lucia di Lammermoor enjoyed immediate success when first performed in Naples in 1835. Supported by a libretto of rare clarity and dramatic power, the composer raised bel canto to its apogee. Now emblematic of romantic opera, the famous mad scene today still embodies the magic of Italian music. Lucia, a magnificent flower shattered by the violence of a society of men, is embodied by South Africa’s Pretty Yende, a rising star of the opera stage, in this production by Andrei Serban, conducted by Riccardo Frizza.