What a Start to the Year!

It is not often that opera really captures the attention of the British media but such has happened with the Royal Opera’s new production of Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment. The Times, no great friend to the Royal Opera House, gave it a five star review as did The Independent, the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph. There were features and interviews in the press, an item on Channel 4 news and on BBC’s Sunday AM. Organs as disparate as The Daily Mail and The Tablet wrote about it. The result was that this became the hottest ticket in town with long queues at the ROH box office hoping for returns. One rumour had it that touts were selling standing places for £150 each.

So what occasioned all this fuss?

In his excellent book on bel canto operas Charles Osborne describes La Fille du Regiment as ‘a delightful example of French opera comique’. And it was for the Paris Opera-Comique that the piece was written in 1840. Despite some rather po-faced (envious?) criticism from Berlioz and others La Fille became a popular success and spread quickly across continental Europe, then reaching the United States in 1843 and London in 1847.

During the twentieth century the opera’s general popularity declined but it returned to the repertoire with a bang in 1966 when Joan Sutherland took on the title role at Covent Garden with Pavarotti as the hero Tonio. The part remained in Sutherland’s repertoire for twenty years and her Tonios included John Alexander, Enrico di Giuseppe, Alfredo Kraus and Rockwell Blake.

The recent revival of interest in the work again has centred around an operatic super-star: the remarkable Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez, one of the finest singers and certainly the best bel canto tenor I have ever heard.

And so we come to people almost literally fighting for tickets in the foyer of the Royal Opera House.

Let me start with Florez. This was as near to a perfect performance as I have ever seen. The famous top Cs shot into the theatre but still had words attached to them and were part of the musical line. Having had us on the edge of our seats (or out of them) with the excitement of Ah mes amis he then had us weeping with the beauty of his Pour me rapprocher, the second verse taken in a sublime mezza-voce.

So was this just a show piece for Florez? Far from it. In the title role we had Natalie Dessay, whose coloratura brilliance and tomboyish antics made for an equally star turn. There was a marvellous Marquise de Birkenfield from Felicity Palmer, including an extraordinary vocal range in the spoken dialogue. And then there was Dawn French in the non-singing part of the Duchesse de Crackentorp. All played for laughs of course, with her occasional lapses into English, but never too much so and I don’t think I have ever heard so much genuine laughter in the Royal Opera House.

The production by Laurent Pelly was a delight with much comic action that actually matched the music. At times it all made me think of Gilbert and Sullivan at its best. I was glad to see an article by Sarah Lenton in the programme explaining how well G&S (Gilbert particularly) knew this work and how much they learned from it.

From the first exposed horn notes to the final cadences the orchestra played brilliantly under Bruno Campanella. They and the chorus seemed to be enjoying themselves enormously.

This production, with the same two principals now goes on to Vienna and then to the Met. Be prepared to fight for a ticket!