Lucia

 

The opera opens impressively, as opera will. Grown-ups criss-cross staging to-and-fro set-ups. An engraved set of ruins and treetops tends to gothic. The world is dressed for the occasion. Until the early transition to confession. Lucia has dreams, she has omens. The opera is on a downward spiral. She cannot say what. She is highly conversant, but she cannot say why omens. The climate of an opinion turns into mood. Mood could turn into “a fact”. The chorus shares the general idea. And this, thus, is where matters change. The opera has a life of its own. Like rifts in a family. Like states heading for showdown. Edgardo exchanges rings with Lucia. Then must leave for “political reasons”, for now. X marks the spot where they sign-off with footfalls. Out into the dark of a known world. The opera requires a signature to be satisfied. A forged signature will suffice, in absence of the real thing. Some of this resembles the novel, but no matter. Semblance is cause for a song. Six voices, each cogent, singing their own reasons, argue out the cross-purposes in perfect harmony. Expectations command from the grave. Parents, ancestors, on either side of a divide innocence will relearn. Alone, a lovers’ refrain remains as a possibility. The opera converges on a moment. Lightning, count the seconds, thunder. It might be abandon, or a duel. If a duel, lover or brother will die, Edgardo or Enrico. This is the way “the system” works. It doesn’t work for Lucia. Signs of murder are in the open, scenery unaltered. Possibility diminishing. And thus the spiral goes downward. The opera is short on conciliation. No one calls a truce. Police are not in sight. The crowd itself could get out of control, but being a chorus chooses to keep time. Peace is restored for a period. The opera staggers with its wounds. Before they were words, dangerous words, that now break open the flesh. Plotless she roams her marriage celebration. A knife leads the wayward proceedings. Lucia pleads with ghosts. She confides with chimeras. Song is the fragments of previous song. Some of the audience leave. Never seen anything like it. But the chorus stands unmute witness to their own complicity. The opera dies on its feet. Messages do not reach their intended, arrive too late. Enrico transgresses a theatrical rule, dying alone by his own hand. True as from the start. Speechless, stalls and dress circle watch the fall in all its symmetry. The opera says it’s curtains. Bitter enemies bow hand-in-hand, to-and-fro, stage front-and-back. Violin bows tap applause on their stands. The conductor offers final gestures, all present and correct. Cognoscenti bravissimi. Herself is only mortal at the edge of things, falling a last time to the ground, and rising. Thunder, count the seconds. Turn on the lights and then turn on the lights. Costumiers are left to clean up the blood.