Popular success, the critics and fame: The early careers of Lucia di Lammermoor and Belisario

Abstract

We have long been accustomed to think in terms of opera ‘stars’, and thus it should not overstrain the imagination to extend the astronomical analogy when dealing with operatic history: to speak of comparisons in magnitude, of orbits, or of suns and their satellites. A particularly useful notion in interpreting with reasonable accuracy evidence surviving more than a century and a half is that of parallax: the apparent displacement of an object caused by an actual change in point of view. A shift caused by the passing of years can intro-duce comparable distortions. My case in point involves the early Italian careers of two operas: Lucia di Lammermoor, making its way much more slowly at first than Belisario, which took off auspiciously but soon fell behind in terms of number of productions and performances. I select these two operas because, in spite of individual differences, they share the same composer and librettist, the same impresario commissioned them and only a little more than four months separates their first performances. Lucia's premiére took place at the San Carlo, Naples, on 26 September 1835; Belisario's the following 4 February at La Fenice in Venice. They emerged, therefore, into much the same climate of sensibility.