The San Francisco Opera has front-loaded its season, and coming up this week is Renee Fleming's appearance in the title role of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. Fleming fans are understandably eager to see the soprano take on this meaty role, but Italian opera fans of all stripes should be pleased. Lucrezia is one of Donizetti's very best scores and one of the significant triumphs of his career, especially after the composer revised it in 1840. Both then, and at its premiere, in Milan in December 1833, a young Giuseppe Verdi would have been able to see it. And while we normally think of Lucia di Lammermoor as the opera that took hold of future generations, it is phrases from Lucrezia that make it into Verdi's Ernani, while several of its significant, forward-looking features — not least the chiaroscuro of party scenes set up against decadence and impending death — heavily influenced the epoch-making Rigoletto. Even today, Lucrezia is gripping music drama.