"More opera performances in Hannover" Top 5 Page for this destination Opera House Tip by Nemorino

While looking through my stacks of old opera programs, I found three earlier ones from the State Opera in Hannover.

Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) is based on a novel by the Scottish author Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). It is the story of a young woman, Lucy Ashton, who is forced by her family to marry a man she detests. She is driven to insanity and stabs her husband on their wedding night. The opera is especially famous for its "mad scene" which goes on for about twenty minutes (after the stabbing) with mainly just the soprano and a haunting flute or glass armonica accompaniment. I have seen this opera numerous times in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin and Darmstadt, but the most unusual staging was the one in Hannover in 2001. In this staging, Lucia does not die at the end, but is secretly committed to an insane asylum by her family. An actress plays Lucia as an old woman. She is on the stage throughout the opera, re-living her memories of her traumatic experiences when she was younger.

This unusual staging of Lucia di Lammermoor was inspired by the fate of the very talented French sculptress Camille Claudel (1864–1943), whose family committed her to an insane asylum for the last thirty years of her life.

Second photo: The Bartered Bride, by Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884). This was a conventional, light-hearted production – nothing unusual, but fun.

Third photo: The first opera I saw in Hannover was Rigoletto, by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). I don’t remember much about the production, which was in 1993, but looking at the cast list I see that the role of Gilda, Rigoletto’s daughter, was sung by Kirsten Blanck, whom I had never heard of at the time. (I later met her when she sang the Queen of the Night in Frankfurt, in Mozart’s Magic Flute.)

Address: Opernplatz 1, 30159 Hannover
Directions: Location of the opera house on Google Maps
Phone: 0511 - 9999 1111
Website: http://www.oper-hannover.de/oper/