For bookish opera fans, Lucia di Lammermoor is the one to see. Donizetti's bel canto melodrama was based, of course, on one of Sir Walter Scott's now unreadable romantic novels from the Scottish border country, The Bride of Lammermoor. But what's really interesting about the opera from a literary point of view is how often it turns up in other novels, including Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and E.M. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread.

The most famous and extensive reference to Lucia comes in Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Chapter 15 is an account of a performance of the opera in Rouen that the adulterous Emma Bovary attends and falls into a reverie of regret about her marriage and is reunited with her lover. Flaubert's writing about Emma at the opera is marvelous:

"She gave herelf up to the lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted trees that shook when anyone walked, and the velvet caps, cloaks, swords -- all those imaginary things that floated amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world.''

Not for nothing is Madame Bovary often called the perfect novel.

Opera Tampa is staging Lucia di Lammermoor, with Elizabeth de Trejo (above) in the title role, Friday and Sunday at the newly named Straz Performing Arts Center (formerly Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center). For information, click here.

[Photo: Opera Tampa]