“Edgardo, I am yours!”, proclaims Lucia di Lammermoor – beautiful, mad and deeply in love – but this is wishful thinking, thinking with which she is determined to defy reality. Constrained by plotting, power struggles and a family feud, she has married Arturo – in Edgardo’s absence and against her own will. Caught in infinite pain she fantasises, straying every further from reality as she does so: her belief in a happy future with her beloved keeps her image of the world intact while death approaches, driven on by worry and desperation. read less