Performance History
The opera premiered on 26 September 1835 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. Donizetti revised the score for a French version which debuted on 6 August 1839 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris. "Lucia" has always been by far the best-known of Donizetti's tragic operas and has never fallen out of the standard repertory. For example, the work was never absent from the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera for more than one season at a time from the entire period of 1903-1972. However, for decades Lucia was considered to be a mere showpiece for coloratura sopranos. After World War II, a small number of technically able sopranos, the most notable of whom were first Maria Callas (with performances from 1952 and especially those at La Scala and Berlin in 1954/55 under Herbert von Karajan) and then Dame Joan Sutherland (with her 1959 performances at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 1959, which were repeated in 1960), revived the opera in all of its original tragic glory. Since then, Lucia di Lammermoor has remained a staple of the standard operatic repertoire, and appears as number nineteen on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.
Read more about this topic: Lucia Di Lammermoor
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