This September, Jennifer Welch-Babidge will make her New York City Opera debut in a new production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, playing the title character who goes mad and kills her fiance because she loves his enemy. It’s a heavy role for any young singer, but in Welch-Babidge’s case, there is an added twist – she is very obviously pregnant. Rather than hide her condition, the director is using it to heighten the drama of the opera, with various characters discovering her bulging belly at key moments in the plot.