"Lucia di Monteriano"

The experience of Philip, Harriet, and Caroline Abbott at the opera in Monteriano dramatizes the conflict in the novel between Sawston -- "a joyless, straggling place, full of people who pretended" -- and Italy, with its emotional freedom and passion.

The scene is comic, but as Benjamin Britten has pointed out:

under the comedy lies seriousness, passion, and worth: the
worth of the Italians loving their tunes, being relaxed and
gay together, and not being afraid of showing their feelings
— not 'pretending,' like Sawston."
Aspects of E. M. Forster.

Forster's choice of "Lucia di Lammermoor" as the opera the English people see is not adventitious.

"Lucia" signifies the intrusion of foreigners into Italy.

A Scottish story set to music by an Italian.

The Italians in the audience take the story into their hearts, reacting freely and enthusiastically.

In contrast, the English -- themselves foreigners in Italy -- bring their own attitudes and prejudices to the opera as they have brought them to Italy in general.

During the overture Harriet, the unassailable bastion of Sawston morality, hushes the noisy and spirited Italians, who, as Forster points out,

were quiet, not because it is wrong to talk
during a chorus, but because it is natural
to be civil to a visitor.

As the theater fills up, however, Harriet loses her power.

The audience enjoys itself, and so do some of the English visitors:

Miss Abbott fell into the spirit of the thing. She, too,
chatted and laughed and applauded and encored, and rejoiced in
the existence of beauty. As for Philip, he forgot himself as
well as his mission. He was not even an enthusiastic visitor. For
he had been in this place always. It was his home.

Harriet does not join in the fun, trying instead

"to follow the plot,"

which in fact bears some resemblance to the plot of Where Angels Fear to Tread.

In the opera, Lucia, of the clan of Lammermoor is in love with Edgardo of the rival Ravenswood clan.

Lucia's brother and guardian, Enrico, who hates the Ravenswoods and stands to profit if Lucia marries someone else, manages to foil their romance.

In the subsequent complications Lucia and Edgardo die.

Enrico repents, but too late.

Like Enrico, Harriet and the Sawston forces behind her try to impose their own interests on the emotional life of the woman under their protection.

But, unlike Lucia, however, Lilia does not die in a melodramatic tragedy.

She dies in childbirth, apparently too weak to sustain the emotional life of which the child was a product and symbol.

In the novel, as in the opera, characters die as
a result of the confrontation of two opposing forces.

And, as there is repentance in the opera, so in the end is there redemption in the novel.

Lilia and her child die, but Philip and Caroline find a new life in the emotional awakening brought about by their part in the attempt to "rescue" the child.

That they can join in the fun at the opera indicates that they have the potential to feel, to escape the pretense and hypocrisy of Sawston.

Harriet, however, has little potential for such a liberation.

She abhors the riotous atmosphere at the opera, finding it "not even respectable."