So listen.  Jones is right that the Met production of Lucia di Lammermoor wasn’t in top form.  Natalie Dessay started slow, but I have to admit finished strongly with her death aria.  I mean – the lady knows how to exit.  Dessay’s voice ended with colour, and a playful wisp that almost made me believe she’d find a way to hang around a bit longer. Thankfully, she didn’t as we got a chance to hear and see her visceral and beautifully physical demise.  But, I think more should be made of tenor Joseph Callejas in the role of Edgardo.  The role isn’t easy in that the opera is written with Lucia in mind. Edgardo is a tricked, betrayed romantic who at every step misjudges the wrath of Lucia’s brother and the frailty turned fickleness of Lucia herself.  In most productions the role is a backdrop or a plinth from which Lucia pushes.

But, Callejas didn’t let the limitations of the libretto stop him.  In his interpretation, Edgardo became, not a romantic, but love in allegorical form.  The consistency and richness of this tenor removed him from membership in the retinue of singers hoping for greatness and placed him as one of the best currently on stage.   I also note that Callejas managed to make his role as much about the vulnerability of blind, extreme, masculine love as Dessay did the sublime tragedy of the feminine version.

Dessay pulled it off at the end, but Callejas delivered all the way through.

Thumbs up here.  Go see it New York.