Scottish Tragedy

"The Bride of Lammermoor" by John Everett Millais. Photo from bridgemanartondemand.com.

By the way, it seems that my posts on Macbeth and Natalie "Lucia di Lammermoor" Dessay have made this Scottish Tragedy Day on my blog. I see that this season, the Met is presenting a new production of Verdi's Macbeth in addition to their new Lucia... I wonder if the connection is intentional?

After all, it's not just that both works are tragedies... but both feature an innocent man being stabbed to death in his bed, an event that takes place offstage, upstairs. And a murderous woman who gets covered in blood and has a really famous mad scene. Still, it's probably not such a bizarre coincidence--I'd wager that Sir Walter Scott was just heavily influenced by Shakespeare as he wrote The Bride of Lammermoor. Plenty of writers have tried, and failed, to get out of Shakespeare's shadow.