Donizetti: Lucia Di Lammermoor - Royal Opera House (2016) [Blu-ray]

Diana Damrau’s reputation as the world’s leading coloratura soprano has been built on her extraordinary technical virtuosity, her sensitive musicianship and her acute psychological insight. In this DVD of Katie Mitchell’s sometimes radical production of Lucia di Lammermoor from London’s Royal Opera House, she is, as the Financial Times wrote, “brilliantly convincing”. At London’s Royal Opera House, the British award winning director Katie Mitchell – whose Aix-en-Provence production of Handel’s Alcina was released on DVD by Erato in 2016 – took a revisionist approach to the drama, updating the action to the mid-19th century and applying a feminist slant as she added new and unexpected elements. The Financial Times wrote: “Mitchell shows us on stage personal traumas that a self-respecting woman in the early 19th century was meant to keep to herself. It is a messy, bloody list — nocturnal sex trysts, a knife murder, a miscarriage, a suicide in the bath … In all this Damrau is brilliantly convincing. Her rebellious Lucia is a woman of modern attitudes stuck in a still feudal Victorian world.” Mitchell also made extensive use of a ‘split screen’ effect on the stage, counterpointing two different pieces of action at key moments.