Wednesday, March 28, 2012

A Night at the Opera: Lucia di Lammermoor

Yet another unforgivably late post. This time, I handed my sketch book over to a friend with a scanner, with the intent of getting this posted much more quickly than the last blog. Well, road to hell, good intentions, etc...

Anyway, here are the things I drew for the last Night at the Opera showing of Lucia di Lammermoor. I enjoyed this one considerably more than Werther for several reasons, mainly the sympathetic treatment of the titular female character. The stage direction and design was also very impressive, making use of very stark and minimalist sets with different colors of light to create different moods. None of which I reproduced in my sketches, of course, because I was using a black marker on white paper.

Here's a quick sketch of Lucia:












As per my usual level of dignity and respect for the fine art of opera, I have summed up the story (more or less) in chibi form. Pardon my handwriting: this was, as before, done mostly in the dark.




















































































Oh, and then Lucia killed that husband she didn't want, then killed herself, and Edgardo was really upset about it. The priest guy was all like, "Oh, she's in Heaven now." Which was pretty cool of him, considering she was a suicide and generally the church frowns on that sort of thing. Overall, I got the sense that we were supposed to sympathize with Lucia, who was stuck in a really shitty situation, and in an effort to have agency over her life again, she sort of went stab-crazy. I mean, I get where she's coming from. I would probably do the same in her place. Because, damn. Not cool, bro.

So that's my super elite and sophisticated review of Lucia di Lammermoor.

Cheers!

-Maria