That's my name, too!

The Minnesota Opera is currently running a production of Lucia di Lammermoor, Donizetti's tale of feuding Scots with Italian names. They have been promoting it on Classical Minnesota Public Radio and elsewhere with the tagline "In all of opera, there's only one Lucia." I've found this to be fairly useless, as it tells nothing of what the story is about, and is also quite generic. You could just as well say that in all of opera there is only one Aida, one Figaro (one character in three operas), or one Nixon.

I was talking about this over the weekend with my opera-buff father, and he explained that besides being silly, the phrase is also false:

• there is a Lucia in Cavalleria Rusticana (the one-act opera featured in the climax of Godfather III that tried so hard to be the climax from Godfather I)
• Mimi, the female lead in La Boheme, explains "Mi chiamano Mimi, ma il mio name e Lucia" ("They call me Mimi, but my real name is Lucia")

So not only is there not only one Lucia in all of opera, but we only need to come up with two more to create an "Operatic Lucias" Jeopardy category.


I propose that for the rest of the week, the MN Opera and MPR revise the ad copy to "In all of opera, there are no fewer than three Lucias. This is one of them." No doubt the Ordway will be standing room only next weekend in gratitude for the accuracy.