Lucia Di Lammermoor (Event Over)

Donizetti based what has become his most famous opera on a novel by Walter Scott. He distilled a very long book into a fast-moving opera and then filled it with some of his most melodic music. Lucia came to typify "bel canto" operas: pieces in which the dramatic flow of a scene sometimes becomes subservient to the need for beautiful singing. The long melodic lines are infused with a beauty that comes to life with singers' embellishments - and nowhere more so than in Lucia's famous mad scene.