Australian director Simon Stone has been making a name for himself in opera over recent years with a string of modern-dress productions that have often divided critics. His recent productions at last year’s Aix-en-Provence Festival are good examples. Where the world premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s Scandi-noir Innocence was a palpable hit with much to say about gun violence in schools, his Tristan und Isolde was a mess of conflicting ideas that only occasionally made any sense. Personally, I admired his visceral Wozzeck for the Vienna Staatsoper earlier this year, while his staging of Yerma with Billy Piper was one of the most devastating and affecting pieces of theatre I’ve seen.

Simon Stone’s Lucia di Lammermoor. All photos © Marty Sohl / Met Opera

So, how does Lucia di Lammermoor – his debut production for the Metropolitan Opera – stack up? On the whole, US critics gave Stone’s updating of the action to a rundown town in the American Rust Belt a mauling, which having watched the advance screening for the Met’s HD series coming to Aussie cinemas on 6 August, seems unfair. While not...