I came to bel canto late, because I had developed a snobbish conviction that it was a form which valued the dots over the theatre. This particular clip of Natalie Dessay, on opening night 2007-08, changed all that at a stroke. The relationship between the music and the drama is intensely symbiotic. The coloratura is an expression of madness- the more distressed she gets, the wilder the vocal acrobatics, or perhaps the other way round. An arpeggio is her saying ‘don’t touch me’, the resolution up a tone after a trill is a moment of horrified realisation. This was at the time when Dessay’s interest in acting was causing all kinds of canards to spring up around her- a reference to Sutherland‘s limited theatrical range was taken as a grave insult, an interest in studying Lecoq‘s practice became ‘she wants to be a clown!’

But honestly this is some of the finest operatic acting I have ever seen, with every dramatic beat serving and springing from the music. And very, very few performers could make that ‘turning the tulle into a baby’ business work, let alone as truthfully and heartrendingly as Dessay does here. I love that she commits to the hand on the injection point for the whole finale section of the scene too, not in a LOOK AT ME I’M STORYTELLING way, but just naturally and honestly. It’s basic beyond belief of me to choose a Lucia Mad Scene for a Donizetti month, but this truly was a gateway drug of a performance for me.

Special mention too to Elena Mosuc‘s chilling performance of the same scene in Brussels, where the coloratura is accompanied by slow, methodical self harm in a way which is genuinely scary, but that performance only seems to be available on YT now in an audience video recorded from the back of the gods on a Nokia during a snowstorm.