The final chapter discusses the opera’s initial reception by nineteenth-century audiences and its future legacy. As many scholars have shown, regardless of its popularity today, the ‘mad scene’ in Act III was not popular in the years following the premiere in 1835. In fact, it was the character Edgardo and his music that received the most praise from audiences and critics alike. Chapter 7 sets out to answer why this was the case by presenting key critical reviews of the work, including those in Naples and Paris. Paris is a rather telling example, for Lucia appeared in three different versions: the original Italian work at the Théâtre-Italien (1837), a French-language version at the Théâtre de la Renaissance (1839) and a French grand opéra version with ballet at the Paris Opéra (1846). In addition to its reception in the press, Chapter 7 also discusses Lucia’s popularity with publishers of opera selections for the salon and the opera’s auspicious appearance in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857). Such reception points to the extent of the opera’s success outside the opera hall and serves as further evidence of Lucia in the everyday consciousness of European audiences.

Farrenc worked within a network of musicians devoted to chamber music, including a dozen or more women pianists who specialized in the Classical repertoire. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, violinists like Pierre Baillot and Jean-Delphin Alard established chamber music concerts that created a culture of enthusiasm for string quartets and quintets, piano trios, and large ensemble music. Pianists like Farrenc, Thérèse Wartel, Sophie Pierson-Bodin, and Clara Loveday specialized in the performance of chamber music in the 1830s–50s, which allowed them to establish professional careers within a social environment that placed strict limits on “respectable” women and their activities in public spaces. Wartel established the Society for Classical Music, which presented septets, octets, and nonets for winds and strings to the Paris public for the first time. Farrenc composed her Nonet for the members of this group of virtuoso wind and string players, who performed it together in her solo concert in 1850.

Later performances of the Nonet led to great critical acclaim for Farrenc, and the relationships that it fostered led her to write more music for wind instruments (a sextet for piano and wind, a flute trio, and a clarinet trio). She won a newly founded prize (the Prix Chartier) for chamber music composers twice in the 1860s. The success of the Nonet in later performances led critics to call for more performances of her symphonies by Paris’s major orchestras, but these seem not to have materialized. Farrenc’s legacy after her death was as one of France’s best composers of instrumental music. Although her works were rarely performed after the 1870s, she was consistently named among lists of women composers in Western history when writers began to pen feminist critiques of concert music culture – these began during her lifetime, as early as the 1850s, and emerged intermittently during the 1880s and up to the present day. Recordings of Farrenc’s music began to bring her to wider attention in the 1970s, and with reviews of these and of the increasingly common public concerts of her chamber music and symphonies, Louise Farrenc has entered the canon of historical women composers.

In Act III, Lucia, who throughout the opera is increasingly showing signs of mental derangement, murders Arturo, the man who her brother arranged for her to marry. To highlight Lucia’s confused mental state, Donizetti composes a multi-sectional aria interspersed with choruses that begins with Lucia’s memory of Edgardo’s voice (‘The sweet sound’), and ends with a show-stopping cadenza (‘Shed bitter tears’). The orchestral accompaniment to this long multi-part aria (over 20 minutes in length) recalls the music found earlier in the opera, including Lucia’s cavatina, the love duet from Act I and the nuptial agreement music of Act II. In no other bel canto opera does female madness reveal itself to such a degree that we hear in the orchestra the inner thoughts of a madwoman on stage. Lucia’s madness is thus rationalised for the listener as we hear what Lucia hears and yet, it remains a complete mystery for the other characters on stage. In addition, no other bel canto opera in the first half of the nineteenth century that contains female madness has the woman woman commit murder. This plot twist therefore connects with more naturalistic tales of domestic violence made popular in the second half of the nineteenth century, such as in the operas of Verdi, Bizet and Puccini.

The Nonet for Winds and Strings follows a four-movement “sonata cycle” design that had become standard in the Classical chamber music tradition by the 1840s: A sonata-form first movement in a fast tempo is followed by a slow movement and an upbeat Scherzo, then a sonata-form finale. Farrenc’s sonata forms demonstrate the influence of her teacher Anton Reicha, whose treatises provide a guide to the informed study of her works. Farrenc’s innovations include continuous development in these movements and colorful harmonic narratives that deviate from later “textbook” explanations of form. Her use of contrapuntal writing, learned variation techniques, and references to familiar pieces from the wind chamber repertoire (Septets by Beethoven and Hummel) demonstrate her compositional mastery. Throughout the Nonet, she writes expertly for the instruments and incorporates playful dialogue and brilliant-style writing for all nine players in every movement. The Nonet became her most popular work, in part, because it balances virtuosity with craftsmanship, and the fun interactions between friends within the ensemble create an atmosphere of learned play for listeners and performers alike.