Lucia di Lammermoor - The Ultimate Operatic Mad Scene | Documentary

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  • Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
  • Lucia di Lammermoor - the Ultimate Operatic Mad Scene - Documentary
    Lucia di Lammermoor is one of the best loved of Gaetano Donizetti’s many operas. It is a tragic tale of a young woman driven to madness and murder by the scheming of her wicked brother and it is famous for one of the most intense and dramatic mad scenes in the whole operatic canon.
    In this video I explore the historical background of madness in opera from my perspective as a psychiatrist, focusing on the ever-popular Lucia di Lammermoor.
    I examine the opera itself, the novel by Sir Walter Scott from which it is drawn and the real-life events in seventeenth century Scotland that formed the basis for Scott’s book.
    I also try to make sense of the opera’s famous mad scene to work out what could have happened to the ill-fated Lucia.
    Finding Out More:
    The best way to find out more is to watch the opera itself. Several productions are available on RUclips, but for better quality I have added a Blu Ray of the excellent Metropolitan Opera version onto my Amazon store page if you are interested: www.amazon.com...
    Academic References:
    Erfurth, A., and Hoff, P. (2000). Mad scenes in early 19th‐century opera. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 102(4), 310-313.
    Jones, M. (1990). Lucia di Lammermoor. Psychiatric Bulletin, 14(9), 556-557.
    Lorusso, L., Franchini, A. F., and Porro, A. (2015). Opera and neuroscience. Progress in brain research, 216, 389-409.
    Peschel, E., and Peschel, R. (1992). Donizetti and the music of mental derangement: Anna Bolena, Lucia di Lammermoor, and the composer's neurobiological illness. The Yale journal of biology and medicine, 65(3), 189.
    Copyright Disclaimer:
    The primary purpose of this video is educational. I have tried to use material in the public domain or with Creative Commons Non-attribution licences wherever possible. Where attribution is required, I have listed this below. I believe that any copyright material used falls under the remit of Fair Use, but if any content owners would like to dispute this, I will not hesitate to immediately remove that content. It is not my intention to infringe on content ownership in any way. If you happen to find your art or images in the video, please let me know and I will be glad to credit you.
    Images:
    Wikimedia Commons
    Wellcome Collection
    Music:
    Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90 'Italian' - Andante con moto - Czech National Symphony Orchestra. Musopen CC1.0
    Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor: Spargi d'amaro pianto Toti Dal Monte, Rosario Bourdon (1926)
    Donizetti - Double Concerto for violin and cello. Giovanni Sollima , Daniele Orlando. I Solisti Aquilani. CC Attribution.
    Donizetti: Sonata in G-minor, Franziska Kannewischer-Fisch, flute, Praxedis Hug-Rütti, harp. CC Attribution.
    Donizetti: Andante Sostenuto. Robin des Hautbois Tropper, Piano: David Chin CC Attribution
    Donizetti: String quartet: Violins: R. Plantevin and M. Mercanton, Viola: A. Vauquet, Cello: F. Courvoisier. CC Attribution
    Claudio Monteverdi: Toccata from L'Orfeo. Bangkok Baroque Ensemble. Trisdee na Patalung, harpsichord and direction. CC3.0 via Wikimedia
    Paul Lawrence: Scottish Celtic: Traditional Scottish musicians, Fort William. CC3.0
    Johann Sebastian Bach - Partita For Solo Flute, a minor (BWV 1013). Scott Goff, flute CC2.0
    Video produced by Graeme Yorston and Tom Yorston.

Комментарии • 77

  • @hnybee113
    @hnybee113 Год назад +17

    As a opera singer for over 25 years. LUCIAS mad scene for any dramatic lyric soprano with strong coloratura is the ultimate challenging Aria. Bring the madness of this scene. Especially covered in blood is truly horrific yet one of the most compelling scenes in opera. Thank you so much for reminding me how much I love this opera as well as singing it.

  • @a.jlondon9039
    @a.jlondon9039 Год назад +12

    Thank you for all of your work and expertise in presenting these brilliant videos.

  • @hulagirlhere
    @hulagirlhere Год назад +16

    The width and depth of your knowledge and interests are amazing! I have binge watched every offering on your channel in the past 2 weeks or so and am thrilled with every new story. The subject matter is phenomenal and your clinical assessments are brilliant. Thank you sir for all your work!

  • @LuciaRPerez
    @LuciaRPerez Год назад +7

    Being an opera and Callas fan I loved this take on Lucia di Lamermoor. I ADORE "La sonnambula", specially Callas approach with Visconti's regie. Amina's story has many parts similar to the ballet "Giselle"

  • @denisedobie6504
    @denisedobie6504 Год назад +2

    Love this one.

  • @TokyoDrftg
    @TokyoDrftg Год назад +7

    I hope you’ll do a video about religious hallucinations (visions). I’m sure you’d cover it better than most. I appreciate your videos as a history major - you cover aspects the history books often skip.

    • @professorgraemeyorston
      @professorgraemeyorston  Год назад +4

      Thank you, I am planning a longer video on Joan of Arc

    • @kAe8560
      @kAe8560 5 месяцев назад

      Marguerite comes to mind. Her descent into madness as staged by the LA Opera chills me to this day. She was before a gigantic crucifix and as her aria progressed the cross slowly shifted sideways, almost imperceptibly at first, ending completely upside down, mirroring her broken mind. It was the most visceral experience I've ever had at an opera.

  • @davidpyott3710
    @davidpyott3710 10 месяцев назад +3

    Brilliant again thanks

  • @artdanks4846
    @artdanks4846 Год назад +6

    Great video, and very informative! Lucia has been one of my favorite operas for over 50 years. And of course, it is the greatest of all Mad Scenes.
    But, I must disagree with you when you say that Lily Pons was "one of the few who could reach the high notes, as written by the composer". The high notes that are normally performed (especially in the Mad Scene) were actually not written by Donizetti, but had become customary for sopranos to interpolate their own cadenzas to display their range and agility. However, where Lily Pons differed from others, is that she sang the Mad Scene in its original key of F, instead of the customary E flat. Donizetti himself agreed to lower the key, to accomodate his original Lucia, Fanny Persiani. Lily Pons restored the original key, and included the customary interpolated high endings, which then put it to High F, instead of E-flat.
    Monserat Caballe also sang it in F, however did not sing the interpolations, as she was not a coloratura.
    To my own mind, the three best Lucias are still Callas, Sutherland, and Sills.
    Thank you for this video! 😁👍

    • @professorgraemeyorston
      @professorgraemeyorston  Год назад +2

      Thank you. That's the thing about opera, everybody has their own favourites.

    • @user-il5oq5df6l
      @user-il5oq5df6l 5 месяцев назад +1

      Nadine Sierra has recently established herself as an outstanding interpreter of the role of Lucia.

    • @artdanks4846
      @artdanks4846 5 месяцев назад

      @user-il5oq5df6l She is definitely very good in the role. I also like Lisette Oporesa.

  • @fipitt4100
    @fipitt4100 Год назад +4

    another winner, thanks mate

  • @terrypitt-brooke8367
    @terrypitt-brooke8367 11 месяцев назад +3

    Excellent--again!

  • @CSchaeken
    @CSchaeken Год назад +3

    Thank you for another very interesting documentary!

  • @natalijaargenta959
    @natalijaargenta959 3 месяца назад +1

    Natalie Dessay in The Met Lucia di lammermoor was the ultimate Il dolce suono aria. She was so breathtaking in that role and she totally loses herself; rolling downstairs, hanging on to her brother as he tries to walk. She was so cool about it, you felt she could sing the whole 18 minutes again. She always did the high notes to perfection and loved the glass harmonica accompanying the madness aria, which you don't always have in many productions.
    That haunting cadenza stays with you as the glass hard sounds like it comes from an otherworldly place.......oh, and Joseph Calleja was so amazing as Edgardo.

  • @sifridbassoon
    @sifridbassoon Год назад +4

    maybe it's because I've never seen Lucia staged, but truthfully, that mad scene is just weird. Or maybe it's just because once you've heard Violetta or Cio-Cio-San, it's hard to unhear it.

    • @professorgraemeyorston
      @professorgraemeyorston  Год назад +1

      Bel canto is very different to Verdi and Puccini and for a long time I wasn't that keen - it is just different .

  • @georgina3358
    @georgina3358 Год назад +2

    Excellent presentation, thank you. I didn't know anything about this opera so found your interpretation very interesting

  • @joyaepace
    @joyaepace Год назад +3

    Lucia’s life totally crashed and she had nothing to live for at that moment. In a state of severe stress her brain gave up and it all became a chaos of grief, anger, despair and memories shutting her mind and causing her to act erratically. I imagine one can kill in a state like that. I don’t know what a real life Lucia would have experienced after a moment of such emotional intensity and can you ever recover from that? Perhaps an extreme intensity of stress can shut down the organs and cause death in some cases?

    • @professorgraemeyorston
      @professorgraemeyorston  Год назад

      In romantic fiction yes, bit not really in real life.

    • @SKOMonster
      @SKOMonster Год назад

      ​@professorgraemeyorston I wouldn't have put it quite as poetic as the other user, but if I go along with the romantic themes in movies and literature, such as the 2006 movie The Page Turner, I was always imagining this sort of collapse as either a stroke or a heartattack due to overwhelming psychological stress. Being capable of occasional strong emotional outburst, it doesn't seem unimaginable to me (although not really likely), but it is true I am quite a bit older than the young heroine, and so was the female character in that movie. As far fetched as the operatic plots are, wouldn't such thing be possible at all, in the ongoing stressful situation and if there was some preexisting cardiovascular condition due to whatever disease she might have contracted in unhygienic 19th century?

  • @carolr4871
    @carolr4871 Год назад +2

    Great presentation. I'm an opera fan, too, but I've never seen this particular one.

  • @monkeygraborange
    @monkeygraborange Год назад +4

    There is only La Stupenda. Her Lucia is the definitive version.

    • @professorgraemeyorston
      @professorgraemeyorston  Год назад

      I think there are many superb versions - each different with their own merits.

    • @chrish2277
      @chrish2277 Год назад +2

      I agree but I'm Australian.. we have to.

    • @josephhapp9
      @josephhapp9 Год назад

      @@chrish2277I’m Australian too,,,,agree.

  • @annettemeyer1393
    @annettemeyer1393 26 дней назад +1

    I have only just stumbled upon your channel with its insightful takes on all sorts of interesting people. I would appreciate an assessment of Mozart, especially an informed opinion on his relatively early death.

  • @nanettetredoux7613
    @nanettetredoux7613 Год назад +3

    New subscriber here. Please consider doing a video on Massenet's Werther, from a mental health perspective.

    • @professorgraemeyorston
      @professorgraemeyorston  Год назад +1

      Welcome aboard, Werther would be a great topic, but RUclips doesn't like videos about suicide.

  • @maheshm5463
    @maheshm5463 23 дня назад +1

    13.40 Takatsubo cardiomyopathy
    Broken heart syndrome is the medical term used in modern cardiology As a practicing physician I have encountered good number of such cases as would have been by others all over the world

  • @jimbuxton2187
    @jimbuxton2187 5 месяцев назад

    I really think the mad scene from hamlet puts all mad scenes to shame...its awesomely crazy....there's Indian themes, high cadenza's, multiple sections and a screamingly crazy ending.... it's Mad at the craziest level!

  • @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc
    @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc 4 месяца назад

    SAW PHANTOM OF THE OPERA AT A MOVIE THEATER GREAT SCENERY CANNOT RECAL THE MOVIE HAD A GREAT SONG

  • @annalisette5897
    @annalisette5897 Год назад +2

    A number of the dramatic stories of grand opera have to do with females completely dominated by powerful males and for some, the mad scene may be their only way to gain a level of power in weakness. There is a mad scene in Anna Bolena shortly before she is to be executed. Roughly translated, the aria means, there is enough blame to go around. (Coppia iniqua estrema vendetta.) There is no mad scene as such in LaTraviata, but Violetta wildly rejoices before dying in part from the griefs that have been put upon her by the male dominated society.
    I am not a feminist as such. I just see a pattern. I am surprised La Sonnambula has a happy ending. The basic story has all the elements to end as a great tragedy, complete with a mad scene.

    • @professorgraemeyorston
      @professorgraemeyorston  Год назад

      There is a pattern, but is not that because women simply didn't have much power in the nineteenth century?

    • @madamepampadour
      @madamepampadour Год назад +1

      @@professorgraemeyorston I think it is @annalisette5897 point: madness is the power of the powerless, I think in the case of Lucia maybe her death does not come from her madness episode per se but from a broken heart. Takosubo Cardiomyopathy, if we have to attribute death medically to fictional characters. Death from broken hearts is also a topic in Romanticism. Donizetti gave you the complete package.
      Long, challenging, demanding to play to the extent of exhaustion: such endings represent female sudden death under extreme suffering and stress both in Lucia de Lammermoor in her title role and Isolde in Tristan und Isolde. Although Isolde is not mad per se, there is a topic of mad love that is worth being sought besides (even when this comes from a love potion in this case). Both love couples in Lucia and Tristan find their resolve in death.
      I love your content and love opera as well!!! I especially admire your analysis on Marilyn Monroe, because you gave her back her agency and resilience in a background of views that strangely only see her as a mere victim of circumstances and of her own traumas. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your dedicated work!!!

    • @whiskeymonk4085
      @whiskeymonk4085 Год назад

      They are irrational by nature dude. No need to read anything into it just accept it.

    • @professorgraemeyorston
      @professorgraemeyorston  Год назад

      Thank you.

  • @jksjksjks3339
    @jksjksjks3339 3 месяца назад

    Wonderful video and very insightful video series! Could you explore the madness phenomenon of St John of the Cross in his “Dark Night of the Soul”, or Stanislav Grof’s work: “Spiritual Emergency” or Kundalini Psychosis?

  • @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc
    @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc 4 месяца назад

    ROMANTIC YES EMOTION SOME PEOPLE ARE VERY EMOTIONAL THOSE SOB SCENES THE POOR ORPHAN CHILD

  • @toddh377
    @toddh377 Год назад +4

    Perhaps a heart disorder gone fatal from extreme stress?

    • @shereesmazik5030
      @shereesmazik5030 Год назад +3

      I agree , maybe a manic episode and physical exhaustion causing a heart attack in a weak heart . This almost happened in my professional career . The patient was also off their lithium , so.

    • @whiskeymonk4085
      @whiskeymonk4085 Год назад +1

      Perhaps she was just being a typical woman.

    • @professorgraemeyorston
      @professorgraemeyorston  Год назад +2

      Yes, the exhaustion of mania with something else could do it.

    • @LuciaRPerez
      @LuciaRPerez Год назад +2

      I was suggesting "Gisselle" and her operatic sister "La Sonnambula" . Bellini's héroe is the mad girl with a happy ending while Gisselle' heart literally "breaks" after the mad scene making possible the amazing act where she becomes a spirit among the Willis

    • @LuciaRPerez
      @LuciaRPerez Год назад +1

      In the case of "Gisselle" I've always felt the second act is in fact some sort of dream of Albrecht.....he feels guilty about what happened to the peasant girl and has this sort of vision in the woods where she forgives him .

  • @southernelle
    @southernelle 11 месяцев назад +4

    Maybe she took poison and let herself be free in her last few hours.

  • @Shahrdad
    @Shahrdad 3 месяца назад

    Those highest notes were not written but interpolated.

  • @battalla1
    @battalla1 Год назад

    Have you had an episode on Louis Wain yet?

  • @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc
    @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc 4 месяца назад

    TY ITALIAN OPERA

  • @hnybee113
    @hnybee113 Год назад +3

    Also Joan Sutherland is the best Lucia ever!!

    • @professorgraemeyorston
      @professorgraemeyorston  Год назад +1

      I have to confess I have never been huge fans of either Joan Sutherland or Maria Callas - I prefer a purer sound - but I know millions will disagree!

    • @petelovesbevsills
      @petelovesbevsills Год назад

      @@professorgraemeyorston you can chalk me up in your corner when it comes to the latter of the two.

  • @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc
    @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc 4 месяца назад

    IVANHOE I RECALL WENT OUT OF FAVOR

  • @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc
    @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc 4 месяца назад

    TY OPERA RUclips WOULD BE BEST I LIKE MAGIC FLUTE

  • @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc
    @AdrienneReneau-ky4sc 4 месяца назад

    ITALY 🇮🇹 TY THOSE ITALIANS I MET 2 ONLINE NICE ONE TOLD ME ABOUT THE POPE I THINK HE GOT INTO A CAR ACCIDENT THE OTHER ITALIAN WAS A TOUR GUIDE AT SOME MOUNTAIN WITH GERMAN AND USA CLIENTS HE WAS A PHYSICALLY FIT HE SHOWED ME PHOTO WHEN I ASKED ABOUT GF HE HAD SEVERAL