Supported by & in Partnership with:
LUCIA invites the viewer into the mental and sensory space of Lucia, the operatic heroine from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.
Rather than portraying her from the outside, as a 'madwoman' holding a dagger covered in blood, this experience positions the participant inside Lucia’s psyche, reframing her hysteria as a rational response to social, emotional, and systemic pressure.
Drawing on feminist critique, the work rejects the operatic tradition of spectacle and instead centres Lucia’s interiority: the distortions, textures, and repetitions of a mind under strain.
Participants sit in a circle of eight, each embodying Lucia’s point of view via headset and sound. Imagery and sound design reference glass harmonicas, hallucinatory light, and fragmented memory; all structured to mirror the unstable logic of a psychological dissociation.
This is not a performance of madness. It is an act of re-voicing.
Dr Toby Young
Writer and Audio Lead
Dr Toby Young is a composer and sound designer whose work blends classical music with cutting-edge technology, with collaborators ranging from the Royal Opera to The Rolling Stones. As Music Supervisor at Punchdrunk he shaped the sound of BAFTA-nominated productions across television and stage. He is Professor of Composition at the Guildhall School, where he leads Immersive Opera, a £1.4M research project reimagining how opera is experienced in the 21st century. On LUCIA he writes the adaptation and leads all music and sound.
Leila Alexander
Concept, Creator and Artistic Lead
Leila Alexander is a soprano and opera maker who creates and performs multidisciplinary work where classical music meets new technology. She has produced and consulted for opera companies internationally, including as producer at Pegasus Opera Company, and has performed at Wigmore Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, Tbilisi Opera House and the Venice Biennale. LUCIA began with her: the idea of stepping inside the opera's most misunderstood woman instead of watching her from the stalls. She holds the artistic vision of the piece.
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Christian Venables
Lead Developer
Christian Venables is a UK VR and AR artist and developer set on making interactive 3D art that anyone can reach. Through his studio CSV Studio he has built high-fidelity immersive work for clients including Disney, Meta and the Smithsonian. Drawing on architecture, industrial design and sculpture, he creates in VR, records the process in XR and shares it in AR. On LUCIA he leads the build, engineering the genuine eight-person multiplayer at the heart of the piece.
Kuba Jekiel
Creative Director
Kuba Jekiel directs immersive worlds that bring people into experiences they would not otherwise reach. He co-directed the animated series Eldrador Chronicles, worked on Introdans and Studio VRij's VRtuoos VRtueel, a multi-user VR dance piece built to make the art form accessible to people who cannot get to the theatre, and was creative director of immersive worlds for BMW Motorrad and Walmart. Trained as an architect, he thinks in space and systems. On LUCIA he shapes how the whole experience looks, moves and feels.
Rachel Duckett
Soprano
Award-winning British-Jamaican soprano Rachel Duckett has won the Sir Willard White Trophy and the Grand Prix de la Voix du CALM. She has performed from the Royal Albert Hall to Opéra de Nice in roles including Lakmé, Olympia, Adèle and the Queen of the Night, with an upcoming reprise as Daughter in Akhnaten at the Philharmonie de Paris. She brings Lucia's voice to the work.