What: Lucia di Lammermoor
When: 8 p.m. Feb. 12, 14, 18, 20. 2:30 p.m. matinée on Feb. 22
Where: Royal Theatre
Tickets: $25 to $135 (Royal and McPherson box offices, 250-386-6121)
Playing Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor isn’t easy.
It’s an unusually challenging role, replete with elaborate vocal ornamentation. It’s also a dramatic part that demands the coloratura soprano be a bona fide actor.
The opera’s most notorious scene is when Lucia, having slain her new husband on her wedding night (she was a reluctant bride) emerges onstage as a madwoman. Although many an opera legend has performed it, the late Joan Sutherland was arguably the most famous Lucia — for her, it was a career-making role.
Winnipeg soprano Tracy Dahl, 53, has accepted the challenge for Pacific Opera Victoria’s new production of Lucia di Lammermoor, opening tonight. Directed by Glynis Leyshon and conducted by Timothy Vernon, the cast features baritone James Westman as bad-guy Enrico and tenor Ernesto Ramirez as Edgardo, Lucia’s star-crossed lover.
If anyone seems equipped to sing Lucia, it is Dahl, a feisty redhead who has sung opera for three decades.
The four-foot-11 vocalist is a coloratura soprano admired for her ability to expertly navigate all turns and trills. Dahl is also an actor — she launched her career as a professional stage actor. She knows the role of Lucia well, having sung it in five other productions.
There’s more. A veteran of La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera, Dahl successfully performed Lucia in that most difficult of circumstances: as a last-minute fill-in. Six years ago, she was called to sub for Ruth Ann Swenson, the celebrated soprano, for a San Francisco production.
Dahl hadn’t sung Lucia for five years. She was then staying in San Francisco, completing a run of another opera.
She had four days to prepare for Lucia di Lammermoor. Dahl flew home to Winnipeg, scooped up the score and her baby, Jaden, then returned to San Francisco.
Before leaving her son with a babysitter to sing Lucia, she said goodbye to Jaden, who gazed at his mother.
“He took his hand off the bed and walked for the first time, on the night. I looked at him and said: ‘If you can do that I can do this!’ ” Dahl said.
Despite her rushed preparations, the performance went well. The orchestra was conducted by Richard Bonynge, Joan Sutherland’s husband. After the show, Sutherland — who had been in the audience — knocked on Dahl’s dressing-room door to offer encouragement.
“She said: ‘Oh, Ricky was so looking forward to this evening. He loves evenings like this.’ My makeup artist had his hand on my back. He was going: ‘Breathe, breathe!’ ”
Being a last-minute Lucia isn’t the biggest battle Dahl has won. She survived a bout of cancer in 2010, undergoing a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Dahl was forced to cancel a season’s worth of engagements.
Reporters often ask her about her fight with cancer; understandably, it’s not something she likes talking about. Dahl also seemed exasperated when asked how long she could maintain the physically taxing vocation of the coloratura soprano, saying: “Oh, this is a really crappy, crappy question!”
She plans to sing as long as her voice is healthy. Dahl says it helps that she teaches singing, as well as performing. She can still tackle the roles she sang as a 19-year-old.
As for the cancer, it did leave her with scars and minor limitations in movement, particularly her left arm. Another legacy: She’s now more impatient about wasting time during rehearsals. “Time is precious,” Dahl said. “I’ll jump on people who are complaining about a birthday. I’ll say, ‘You have a birthday. Celebrate it.’ ”