Lucia Di Lammermoor February 28, 2011

Natalie Dessay will return to the Metropolitan Opera in the title role of Donizetti's 'Lucia di Lammermoor.' Donizetti based what has become his most famous opera on a novel by Walter Scott. He distilled a very long book into a fast-moving opera and then filled it with some of his most melodic music. Lucia came to typify "bel canto" operas: pieces in which the dramatic flow of a scene sometimes becomes subservient to the need for beautiful singing. The long melodic lines are infused with a beauty that comes to life with singers' embellishments - and nowhere more so than in Lucia's famous mad scene.