Growing up in Donizetti’s native Bergamo, Rovaris was exposed to works like The Elixir of Love and Don Pasquale at an early age. By age 14, when he left home for Milan to study composition, organ and harpsichord, the seeds were sown for a lifelong bond. Rovaris returns home each year on Donizetti’s birthday (November 29) to lead an emotional tribute to the late, great composer where he is interred at Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. 

"Donizetti wrote about 75 operas but only a few of them have remained in the standard repertoire,” said Rovaris, speaking on Lucia di Lammermoor's lasting impact. "Lucia is really the typical romantic opera, with madness, and the dynamic technique of a soprano. 

“Usually operas were very staid in the 19th century," he went on. Lucia di Lammermoor was an exception, one that really rocked opera houses at the time. "You can’t forget it. It has been always very present in the seasons all over the world." 

The new production from Opera Philadelphia and Wiener Staatsoper premiering in Festival O18 comes with a particularly Philly-centric bit of music trivia involving one of the city’s favorite sons, Benjamin Franklin. 

The glass harmonica, or armonica as it is also known, is one of the most fascinatingly odd instruments ever invented. Marie Antoinette played it. Marianne Davies and her sister, soprano Cecilia Davies, performed with it as a duo publicly around Europe as the American colonies were headed toward revolution. Beethoven and Mozart composed for it. And Philadelphia’s own Franklin is its founding father. An old, beaten-up version (it is said his descendants and their children took delight in smashing some of the glasses) is owned by the Franklin Institute Science Museum, where it gets pulled out of its display case for the occasional birthday tune.  

Donizetti composed Lucia di Lammermoor with Franklin’s instrument in mind, seeking an otherworldly sound for several of his title characters arias and one key scene in particular. The glass harmonica has come to be associated with derangement, mental instability, and frightening sadness, a perfect match for Lucia's manic spiraling. So why do most Lucia productions feature a flute solo during the famous “mad scene?”  

“Donizetti wrote this opera for the glass harmonica and during the last rehearsals in Naples, there was a management problem and the [glass harmonica player] left,” explained Rovaris. “The glass harmonica is so peculiar and so specific but it is impossible to replace. Donizetti had to give it to the flute player as a last-minute solution.”  

Of course, the glass harmonica has cultivated some particularly incredible lore over time. All the more important for a scene like Lucia’s post-marital madness to be accompanied by an instrument characterized by its mythology of insanity. German musicologist Friedrich Rochiltz wrote in a popular European music periodical that the armonica was not to be played by those with a nervous disorder or morose disposition.  

“This kind of sound, it almost boggles the mind,” explains Rovaris. “Donizetti really wanted to describe the madness of Lucia, so that’s why it’s really important - if you don’t use the glass harmonica, you miss the most important characterization in the score. It’s the most interesting thing in the Lucia score because it’s really so modern to be able to describe what’s on stage with the sound.”