Does a person have to feel madness in order to act it out?
A better question would be: what it’s like to be mad? People who’ve been diagnosed as psychotic usually don’t think of themselves as mad. In fact, most of them are quite coherent in their world view. It’s a thought that I find helpful when I’m getting into the character of Lucia.

Do you yourself get worked up into a furore when you’re singing?
That’s Donizetti’s genius for you. If you’ve got the right vocal inflection for the role you’re singing, you don’t have to force the passion; it comes naturally. The way the pieces have been written, a singer can’t help but feel the emotion that’s there – and the furore, too.

Lucia dies in the end. Is there any positive take-away from her death for us at all?
Her death is her way of reclaiming her freedom of agency. She doesn’t go mad so much as opt to embrace madness. The alternative would amount to a different kind of death – a life under the surveillance of a husband she doesn’t love.

The Mad Scene is generally held to be one of the hardest pieces to pull off in the operatic canon. How do you prepare for it?
If I’m honest, I don’t think of it as a particularly difficult scene. The big thing for me is seeing Lucia’s predicament through her eyes. Her mind is in turmoil, she’s on an emotional rollercoaster, everything happens at once. The way our emotions get wrenched this way and that, it’s like someone is continually changing the position of the needle on a record. And my voice has to convey this chaos.

And how do you manage to immerse yourself in the chaos?
Firstly, by empathising with Lucia’s situation. She becomes a plaything for powerful men and all the odds are stacked against her. Who wouldn’t go mad in her position? Secondly, the music is a big help. Right up to the mid-point of the opera she’s delivering lovely little tightly controlled lullabies. The fervour of the madness aria is still quite a way off, but it’s not something that appears from nowhere. Donizetti gradually gets me to this state as a singer. At a musical level it’s a development that you understand intuitively.

Madness involves a loss of control, yet your job is to convey all that with meticulous precision. How do you manage it?
At first glance you’d say it was a contradiction in terms. But in the end it’s no different to any other role: it has to take you over completely, and only then can you immerse yourself properly in the role.

What’s your own personal takeaway from LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR?
Odd though it may sound, I sometimes think Lucia opting to embrace madness is actually a rational act on her part, considering her hopeless predicament. The work gets me pondering on the relationship between the rational and the irrational – because we might just as well ask ourselves who is actually madder: a society that can spawn such injustice, or a woman who comes to grief because of it?

Can we learn anything from crazy people?
An interesting question. Nowadays we’d obviously be talking about the psychologically impaired, but mad people are characters who are still able to point up social injustices. It’s not always like that, but we know for a fact that many illnesses are exacerbated by one’s personal circumstances, meaning that they shine a spotlight on the society which has given rise to them.