Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor.(Movie Review)

[] Moffo; Kozma, Fioravanti, P. Washington; Rome Symphony Orchestra, RAI Chorus, Cillario. VAI DVD 4211, 108 mins. 1971, color, subtitled

For a satisfying Lucia di Lammermoor, all you really need are singers familiar with melodramatic flourish and Donizettian cantilena, a decent horn section, a flute and a lot of baggy costumes with lace at the throat. The soprano should know how to ornament a line and act picturesquely demented at the same time. Pretty is a plus--it gives the tenors a motive to fight over her, and the rest of us a motive to watch.

The loving film RAI made in 1971 is a solid, old-fashioned Lucia with solid, old-fashioned performances--scenic, well acted and sympathetically designed. Though it's in full color and makes use of modern techniques that permit camera angles to wander, it's already a dated way to film opera--the lip sync is imperfect, and the cuts from one shot to another in mid-phrase can jar. Traditional cuts are taken: ornamented cabaletta repeats, Wolf's Crag, the Raimondo--Lucia duet.

Anna Moffo's voice is cool and gracious, her acting understated, and she looks exquisite. Her mad scene, in which she wanders through a room full of motionless guards over the murmurs of invisible guests, makes its points gently; she is not frenzied but lost in a daze--you'll have to take Cammarano's word for it that this delicate creature is a murderess.

Lajos Kozma, who resembles Errol Flynn, can sing love and gaze it at the same time, and he knows how to float a line without audible effort. Giulio Fioravanti roars Enrico's cabaletta with satisfying thunder. Paolo Washington's Raimondo has a lighter voice than the baritone, but he is affecting in his account of Lucia's madness. Pietro di Vietri, the hapless Arturo, has a sheep's-bleat tenor. The spare brushstrokes of Donizetti's orchestration fall into satisfying place under Carlo Felice Cillario's baton. Though the opera moves with impressive speed, nothing is hurried or eccentric.

Mario Lanfranchi's direction is of its time and place. There are few shadows in his Scotland and no babbling fonte to accompany the harp solo (and Moffo's graceful run across the lawn); instead, we have sunlight everywhere and a very Italian castle--not Walter Scott-ish, but surely just the place Cammarano and Donizetti had in mind--and Act II concludes, over Donizetti's liveliest stretta, with an exhibition of (bloodless) swordsmanship up and down the castle staircases, Edgardo having brought a few friends along. The clashing blades in this scene are, by the way, the only sound-effect permitted to intrude on the music--no footsteps, no wind in the trees, no clip-clop of horses--except for the clank of Edgardo's dagger as it falls from his dying hand by Lucia's ...