11.   The mad scene was strong, incorporating the traditional mime.

12.   The music is a takeoff on Italian opera, mostly Donizetti, complete with a mad scene for tenor in drag, with distant flutes and harps in duet.

13.   Would it be hyperbolic to describe its sustained power as Shakespearean or to compare it to mad scenes by Bellini and Donizetti?

14.   An even more important problem with the mad scene is the staging.

15.   But the famous part of the mad scene in which soprano voice alternates with flute was gone.

16.   On Wednesday, the mad scene was sung in its original key of F and a glass harmonica, representing mental instability, was played.

17.   She seemed absolutely out of her mind, as crazy as any Lucia performing the mad scene, switching from forte to piano.

18.   Shantala Shivalingappa, clothed in flowing white, is a lovely Ophelia, whose mad scene, unfortunately, appears truncated.