I am glad to report that the problems that I experienced until recently
with the *lettrine* module have disappeared. At present it works like any
other regular module.

As the *lettrine* source file does not seem to have been modified, I
conclude that the reason of the improvement should be attributed to the
modification of some other unknown piece of the complex *ConTeXt*
machinery. The interpreter at work is

mkiv lua stats > luatex banner: this is luatex, version beta-0.77.0 (tex
live 2013/w32tex) (rev 4645)

This should be good news (at least it has been for me) as *lettrine* is a
more powerful and complete command than *inital* for the intended job and,
above all, is much better documented.

Regards

Francisco