Natalie Dessay is all over New York. She has been the cover girl for the Met's 2007/08 season and her forlorn face has graced billboards, buses and subway stations around town and is still on the front of Met programmes. But the French starlet has flown town and in her place another French soprano, Annick Massis, has the unenviable task of stepping into Dessay's shoes as Lucia. Not an easy ask. However Massis seemed to take the whole thing in her stride and there was a palpable feeling in the house that everyone wanted her to succeed as much as Dessay. And to a large extent she did.

Massis has an exceedingly pretty soprano voice, slightly on the small side, which made it hard for her to fill the vast spaces of the Metropolitan Opera House. Nevertheless she has been exceptionally well prepared by director Mary Zimmerman, moving from coquettish charm in the first Act to the doom laden lady bent on murder and madness in the final Act. Her mesmeric mad scene combined both dramatic insight and vocal fireworks, lacking only a sense of vulnerability and edginess that propels the character to its fateful ending. She may not have taken New York by storm, but she certainly seemed to have kept everyone happy.

The remainder of the cast have been there since opening night and are well settled into their roles. Mariusz Kwiecien was particularly strong as the down-at-heel brother, Enrico, using his dark baritone voice to project the domineering side of his character. Sadly, Marcello Giordano opted for a stand-and-deliver approach to Lucia's lover, Edgardo, preferring volume over finesse. Can belto is never the best way to perform bel canto, and was at odds with Massis' style of singing. The smaller roles were well taken with Stephen Costello standing out as Arturo.

Mary Zimmerman's production is to a large extent traditional, except for the fact that it has been updated to the Victorian era. Daniel Ostling's designs have a clean-cut feel about them and while they were always pleasant to look at there was very little feeling of the sinister undertones of the work. While gothic gloom and swirling tartan may no longer be in favour, there does need to be some sense of the background events to the story where family feuds and male dominance have far reaching consequences.

Occasionally Zimmerman had the tendency to over direct at places in the drama where the music is paramount. The worst incidence of this is was during the famous sextet in Act II, where the fussy photographic session completely upstaged the music. Did no one tell Zimmerman that this is one of the most famous sextets in all opera?

At the end of the day it was Massis who was the winner here. It may not have been a flawless performance, but her exquisitely crafted mad scene set the seal on a performance to reckon with. Dessay will be back in March next year for more Lucias, but in the meantime Massis is worth catching.

The picture above features Natalie Dessay as Lucia in Mary Zimmerman's production of Lucia di Lammermoor