Lucia di Lammermoor

Lucia di Lammermoor is an 1835 Italian opera by Gaetano Donizetti, in which Lucia is driven to madness and murder by family pressure and a doomed love.

Mad Scene: A famous operatic scene in which Lucia sings after losing her sanity. Lucia’s breakdown after the forced marriage gives the opera its best-known vocal set piece.
Lucia Ashton: The heroine of Donizetti’s opera, whose love for Edgardo conflicts with her brother’s plans. Her constrained choices and mental collapse organize the opera’s tragic action.
The Bride of Lammermoor: A historical novel by Walter Scott, published in 1819, about a doomed marriage in Scotland. It supplied the story of Lucy Ashton and Edgar Ravenswood that Donizetti’s opera adapts.
I puritani: An 1835 opera by Vincenzo Bellini about love and political conflict during the English Civil War. Its mad heroine invites comparison with Lucia, though Bellini’s opera ends in reconciliation.
Prima donna: The leading female singer in an opera company or production. Lucia became a major vehicle for the vocal and dramatic authority of leading sopranos.
Il dolce suono: The opening words of Lucia’s celebrated mad scene, often used as its title. The scene’s coloratura and glass harmonica evoke Lucia’s fractured state of mind.
Edgardo di Ravenswood: Lucia’s lover and the last surviving member of the rival Ravenswood family. His secret engagement to Lucia gives Enrico leverage over her future.
Walter Scott: A Scottish novelist and poet whose historical fiction shaped nineteenth-century literature. His novel provided the opera’s characters, setting, and tragic premise.
Anna Bolena: A 1830 opera by Donizetti about Anne Boleyn’s final days and execution. It is another Donizetti tragedy centered on a woman destroyed by political power.
Joan Sutherland: An Australian coloratura soprano celebrated for her performances in bel canto opera. Her Lucia helped renew international attention to the opera in the twentieth century.

Linked from 8 pages