Rose-Antoinette Bellino, a first-year master's degree candidate, and Joseph McBrayer, a first-year graduate student, kiss as their characters, Lucia Ashton and Edgardo Ravenswood, bid one other farewell. "The opera is a story of true love's conflict, duties to the family, and what can happen to a mind under pressure," director Jose Maria Condemi said. "I felt it fit well in the Victorian era, with the ghosts, the constraints on women, while at the same time allowing me more freedom to create." Emily Berryman