lucia di lammermoor at the metropolitan opera

On tour once in Chicago, when the tenor in Tannhäuser fell ill and couldn’t finish the final act, Melba, the evening’s Elisabeth, compensated the audience by having a piano wheeled out so she could sing the mad scene. The first Met performances of La Bohème, in November 1900, featured Melba as Mimì, and once Puccini’s tragedy was over, the great soprano, perhaps thinking her audience had not gotten its just desserts, would come out and sing the Lucia mad scene. Lucia was so closely associated with Melba that she would often add the character’s famous mad scene as an encore at performances of other operas she was singing.

The next year, another legendary soprano, Nellie Melba (pictured below), made her Met debut as Lucia, a role which would practically be her personal property for the next decade. Following a brief period of nine seasons in which a German troupe performed at the Met, Lucia returned in 1892 for a single performance with one of the iconic songbirds of the 19th century, Adelina Patti. Marcella Sembrich (pictured above) sang Lucia on the second night of the Met’s 1883 opening season, repeating it ten more times to great acclaim. In the first half-century of Met history, Lucia was the inevitable calling card of the most renowned coloratura sopranos of the day-and it was an era with a steady stream of brilliant virtuoso singers. With 611 performances to date, Lucia outranks all other Italian bel canto operas in popularity except for Rossini’s comedy Il Barbiere di Siviglia, which has been given 632 times. Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor has rarely been out the Metropolitan Opera repertory in the company’s 137-year history.

Lucia di lammermoor at the metropolitan opera