In review: from around the world: Chicago.(North America)(Lucia di Lammermoor)(Opera Review)

Lucia di Lammermoor reentered Lyric Opera of Chicago's repertory on January 24, in a revival of a rather plain production, made extraordinary by a dream team of singers: Marcelo Alvarez, in his Lyric debut as Edgardo, and the exquisite Natalie Dessay, who triumphed in her first North American Lucia.

When conductor Jesus Lopez-Cobos recorded his own edition of Lucia some years ago, it seemed a radical return to Donizetti's autograph score, with its restoration of the title role to lyric soprano, singing in higher keys with minimal embellishment. At Lyric Opera, with Dessay, Lopez-Cobos had at his disposal a high coloratura with a capacity for dazzling ornamentation who also had the taste to avoid a rush to pyrotechnics at every available opportunity. The result was a rare artistic marriage of scholarship and tradition.

An explanatory program note by Lopez-Cobos detailed the presentation of Lucia's fountain aria ("Regnava nel silenzio") in the original key of E-flat; the soprano-baritone duet was also sung in the higher autograph key, reminding us that Enrico is, after all, a young man. Tradition then informed a mad scene employing an extended cadenza and imaginative decoration of the vocal line. The score was performed virtually note-complete, save for a couple of minor excisions in Act II, and tempos were brisk, emphasizing the underlying turbulence inherent in this music.

Dessay had quite an evening. The French coloratura, in her initial traversal of the role in the original Italian, was in superb form, her instantly recognizable timbre focused and delivered with just enough bite to keep things interesting. The voice acquires a distinctive shimmer above the staff, and it coursed through the elaborate filigree with precision and spontaneity, exhibiting liquid trills and a lovely diminuendo. Dramatically, the soprano created a tightly wound, febrile presence at her first entrance, a fragile slip of a girl overwhelmed by the dominating men around her. Dessay's take on the mad scene was theatrically incisive and just a shade quirky. Rather than presenting the usual dreamlike neurasthenia, this Lucia was agitated and desperate, trembling with a disturbing dyskinesia and obsessively wiping blood from her hands onto her gown. The ...