Like the theater stagings of Belgian director Ivo van Hove that have intrigued New York theatergoers over the past decade, Stone’s Lucia relies heavily on live and pre-recorded video for much of its immediacy. On the other hand, it’s difficult to imagine Stone’s complex, technically challenging version will be around for very long. Yet that production, updated to Victorian time and conceived as a vehicle for Natalie Dessay, lasted more than a decade, considerably longer than the previous two. More problematic was Zimmerman’s decision to bring back Lucia as another ghost to “assist” her grieving lover in killing himself. Theater director Mary Zimmerman then made her Met debut on opening night of the 2007-08 season with a Lucia in which the ghost the heroine sings about in her opening aria actually appeared on stage. Lucia ’s checkered production history at the Met dates back thirty years: Francesca Zambello’s 1992 much disliked version starring June Anderson amid a stage full of coffins was replaced just six years later by Nicolas Joël’s blandly traditional take. Regietheater– where a director’s sometimes wild ideas can overwhelm the music-has become the accepted and expected practice in much of Europe, but at the Met it continues to stoke controversy even in its mildest forms. Reimaging familiar works from the past, particularly moving their time period to the present or near-present day, has become so common over the past few decades that it’s no longer trendy.
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