Vittorio Grigolo Is Fearless as Edgardo

NEW YORK — In most performances of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” it’s hard not to feel a little sorry for the lead tenor during the final scene. This tormented moment for the character Edgardo is one of the composer’s most inspired creations, but it immediately follows Lucia’s famous mad scene.

But thanks to a fearless performance by tenor Vittorio Grigolo, Edgardo’s scene was the high point of the evening Thursday when Mary Zimmerman’s 2007 production of “Lucia” returned to the Metropolitan Opera. Other cast members had their moments, especially luminous soprano Olga Peretyatko-Mariotti, singing her first Lucia at the Met, who was at her best when it mattered most during the long, demanding mad scene. Still, all night Grigolo had a fervor that no one else matched.

Grigolo put everything on the line for that final scene, at the graveyard of the Ravenswoods, a landed Scottish family in decline. Edgardo, the laird of that estate, has fallen in love with Lucia, the sister of a rival clan, the Lammermoors, now headed by her imperious brother, Enrico, who is Edgardo’s sworn enemy. But to save the Lammermoors from financial ruin, Lucia, who adores Edgardo, has been forced into a marriage of convenience with a wealthy lord.

Edgardo comes to the graveyard at the very moment he believes Lucia is entering her bridal chamber with her new husband. Grigolo mingled raw despair and feral intensity when he sang Edgardo’s wrenching aria, as he anticipates being killed in a duel at dawn with Enrico. In the second part of the scene, when Edgardo learns that Lucia is dying (having gone mad and stabbed her husband to death), Grigolo’s vocally burnished and wild-eyed singing made the young man seem unhinged.

Was his performance over the top? Perhaps. But opera could use more of his animalistic intensity. The otherwise curiously tame “Lucia” benefited from it.

Peretyatko-Mariotti’s Lucia had admirable qualities. During her first aria, when she tells her handmaiden Alisa (Deborah Nansteel) that she keeps seeing the ghost of a young woman slain by a jealous lover in the castle’s fountain, Peretyatko-Mariotti conveyed the emotional shakiness of her character by injecting the ornate vocal lines with a touch of skittishness.

Though the technical aspects of her singing were mostly secure, now and then, even during the compelling mad scene, Peretyatko-Mariotti seemed cautious and distracted — for example, taking a moment to prepare for sustained high notes, then singing them shakily. During the romantic exchanges in Act 1, Grigolo, with his unbridled passion, inspired Peretyatko-Mariotti to risk more. Her scene in Act 2 with Lucia’s brother fell flat though, mostly because of the stolid singing of baritone Massimo Cavalletti as Enrico. Peretyatko-Mariotti seemed disengaged.

Mellow-voiced bass Vitalij Kowaljow was touching as the well-meaning family chaplain who advises Lucia to listen to her brother. The conductor, Roberto Abbado, did his best to animate the performance, leading with style and effective pacing. But Grigolo, fresh from his acclaimed performance in the Met’s new “Tosca,” is the reason to see this “Lucia.”

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Event Information:

‘Lucia di Lammermoor’

Through May 10 at the Metropolitan Opera; 212-362-6000, metopera.org.