Lucia di Lammermoor, 2025
Opera Holland Park
Conductor: Michael Papadopoulos | Designer: Neil Irish | Movement Director: Will Byram | Lighting Designer: Tim van ’t Hof
Cast: Jennifer France, José de Eça, Morgan Pearse, Blaise Malaba, Charlotte Badham, Joseph Buckmaster, David Webb
★★★★
A touching and convincing Donizetti staging
”The unforced warmth of France’s heroine wins the audience’s sympathy from the outset in Cecilia Stinton’s thoughtful new staging of the bel canto bloodbath… the heroine is a charmer, a little wacky perhaps, prone to the odd hallucination maybe, but in different circumstances you imagine she’d be fun to be around. It’s also clear from the sexual violence played out behind the backs of her testosterone-fuelled lover and brother as they sing a rollicking duet on the forestage that when this Lucia kills it will be in self-defence”
The Guardian, Clive Paget
★★★★
Opera Holland Park captures the sheer melodrama of Lucia di Lammermoor
”that Walter Scott used to visit Holland House forms the backdrop to the opera… the production is powered by fine singing and playing”
The Telegraph, Nicholas Kenyon
★★★★
a thrillingly sung new Donizetti production
“Lucia is playful — she winds up her maid, Alisa, with tales of the ghost — and her Act I love duet Verranno a te sull’aure is done as poetry dictation, Lucia declaring her love, on a fragile thread of one, with Edgardo writing it down and singing it back to her… The amorous sextet is a showstopper"
The Times, Mark Pullinger
★★★★
Donizetti's gothic gore fest delivered with skill and emotion
“Opera can often feel a little static, but she perambulates the vast stage, her shift dress marked with murder, like an even madder version of the young Kate Bush. Director, Cecilia Stinton, demanded a lot and boy, did she (and us) get it”
Broadway World, Gary Naylor
★★★★★
a sumptuous feast
”Donizetti’s glorious music is beautifully interpreted in an absorbing dramatisation directed by Cecilia Stinton in which every element plays a part… Cecilia Stinton’s decision to show him upstage emerging from the bridal chamber as the sung action takes place downstage is a brilliant one. His swaggering presence as he continues to force himself on Lucia makes complete psychological sense of her plummet into murderous madness”
The Reviews Hub
old-fashioned drama & a modern gloss
”Set firmly in the 1840s and full of narrative detail, this was a Lucia that combined immediacy with vivid musical theatrics and a sense of drama… Stinton brought a sense of the female gaze to the story without doing too much violence to the dramaturgy, giving a chance for Jennifer France's very traditional Lucia to have the right setting, and surrounding her with men whose weakness we could both sense and understand. The result was a Lucia that combined immediacy with vivid musical theatrics and a sense of drama”
Planet Hugill, Robert Hugill