Met Opera’s Opening ‘Lucia’ Draws Close to the Madding Crowd

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The opera presented last night at the Metropolitan Opera, Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” is about a woman who goes mad in a tragic, murderous way, and the company’s 124th opening night responded with a jubilant New York kind of madness: glamorous patrons from all over the world, two Irish wolfhounds from New Jersey taking a stroll before their operatic debuts in the first scene, and New Yorkers from all walks of life watching the performance on screens in Times Square and on the Lincoln Center plaza.

Amid the mad whirl was an island of heartfelt calm: a shared confidence that Peter Gelb, in his second year as general manager, is taking the Met, and the art form, in exactly the right direction.

“Peter has done something fantastic in creating the red carpet,” a vice chairman of the opera, Mercedes Bass, said as she walked down that carmine path in an Oscar de la Renta gown, accompanied by her husband, oilman Sid Bass, and newscaster Barbara Walters.

Mr. Gelb has done much more than arrange for a few hundred feet of red all-weather matting: Board members raved about how he attends most of the rehearsals and has a ready grasp of every aspect of the form. And he’s getting results: ticket sales were up 7% last year after five years of decline.

“We now look to come to this opera house with excitement, and he hasn’t disappointed us yet,” the executive producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Joseph Melillo, said.

“Last year came out of nowhere; this year we know what to expect, and it promises to be exciting,” the editor of Opera News, F. Paul Driscoll, said, noting the magazine has had an uptick in circulation since Mr. Gelb took the helm.

From the Grand Tier of the opera house, actress Jane Fonda, 69, summed up the scene: “There’s a lot of money and a lot of beauty, and age-wise I feel quite at home,” she said.

Mayor Bloomberg watched from a box with fellow billionaire Henry Kravis.

From the stage, Mr. Gelb called for a moment of silence in memory of two great opera talents who died recently, Beverly Sills and Luciano Pavarotti.

After the performance, 1100 people, including Walter Cronkite, Placido Domingo, Zac Posen, Willem Dafoe, Anthony Minghella, and Bianca Jagger, attended a dinner (heirloom chicken with lemon thyme sauce and Champagne Louis Roederer) in a tent in Damrosch Park that designer David Monn had decorated to recall a Scottish forest, the setting for the opening night’s opera. The event raised more than $4.9 million.

And when Lucia, played by Natalie Dessay, sang of her love for Edgardo in the second scene of Act I, “I forget my sorrows and my tears turn to joy,” she might have been speaking for the 4,000 people in the opera house.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use