The razor’s edge
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- April
- 17
Introducing “Lucia di Lammermoor” — which PBS’ “Great Performances at the Met” will rebroadcast at noon Sunday on THIRTEEN — host Natalie Dessay — a leading Lucia herself — described the character as “another woman done in by men and circumstance.”
I got to thinking about that, especially as HBO is presenting the new telefilm “Grey Gardens” at 8 p.m. Saturday. It stars Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore as Edith Bouvier Beale, senior and junior — the Jackie relations who became famous in 1973 after Albert and David Maysles’ documentary portrayed them living in splendid squalor and delusion in the titular East Hampton manse.
Putting aside the mental illness the fictional Lucia and the real-life Edies may have suffered from, all three are cautionary examples of what happens when women are beholden to men for their very lives, let alone livelihoods and lifestyles.Gaetano Donizetti’s opera is one of those hokey melodramas in which everyone lives in Scotland but sings in Italian. (It’s based on Sir Walter Scott’s “The Bride of Lammermoor.”) Passionate Lucia Ashton (soprano Anna Netrebko) is in love with dashing Sir Edguardo of Ravenwood (tenor Piotr Beczala). But her brother, Lord Enrico of Lammermoor (baritone Mariusz Kwiecien), who stole Edguardo’s birthright, wants her to marry wimpy Lord Arturo Bucklaw so that he can save Enrico from financial ruin. Enrico leads Lucia to believe that Edguardo has forgotten her when he heads off to France to build a new Scotland — presumably one in which everyone will speak English. Lucia is forced to marry Arturo, Edguardo returns furious at her for betraying him, everyone rushes at everyone — and sings the famous sextet. Is it any wonder that Lucia goes nuts and murders Arturo on their wedding night? And still, as Loretta might say in “Moonstruck,” she has to sing the Mad Scene aria.
The singing is so good — Netrebko in particular sounds lush and looks even riper post-pregnancy — that it forces you to take the story seriously. Why should Lucia have to prostitute herself to save her brother? It makes no sense. And yet, this is not just the stuff of 19th-century melodrama. (Though the opera is set early in the 18th century, Mary Zimmerman’s production updates it appropriately to the Victorian era.) Look at what’s happening today in Afghanistan — no country for women — where men are allowed to rape their wives. Insane.
“Grey Gardens” is the story of two real, modern women. But in a sense, Big and Little Edie were no better off than Lucia. Because they were women of a certain socioeconomic class and time, they never learned how to support themselves financially, or psychologically for that matter. (Both imagined that they were talented performers.) When the money — and the men — ran out, the Edies were thrown back on their own fragile yet somehow enduring selves. (Big Edie’s sons seemed to have escaped somehow. They figure very little in the story. It’s left to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, played with quiet, rueful compassion by Jeanne Tripplehorn, to save Grey Gardens from being condemned.)
It’s such a sad story. And yet, in their own way, Big and Little Edie (well-played by Lange and Barrymore, despite the wavering accents) are portrayed as happy amid the cats and the filth. You get the sense in this creepy, absorbing drama, that despite the ties that bind and strangle, the real-life mother and daughter loved as well as needed each other.
Still, as “Lucia” also demonstrates, love isn’t enough. It’s so easy to fall between the cracks, particularly when you’re a woman who’s financially and emotionally dependent on a man. Both “Grey Gardens” and “Lucia” suggest that for them, the margin between success and failure, sanity and madness, is and always has been paper-thin.
This entry was posted
on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 4:26 pm by Georgette Gouveia.
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