La Fille du Régiment - Metropolitan Opera

Donizetti had one desire as a writer of opera – entertainment. He has no obvious philosophy, politics, axe to grind. True he wrote many operas on historical topics, but I don’t think you will find a historian who takes his portrays very seriously. What he gives you music written for the beautiful voice, bel canto, and either lots of broad comedy or lots of blood. This season we got blood from him on opening night in the form of Lucia di Lammermoor and comedy for the last new production of the season La fille du régiment. In both cases Natalie Dessay was the eponymous heroine. She was fine as the doomed Lucia and sang wonderfully but it was hard to take the stilted libretto, for the comedy of La fille du régiment she was brilliant in every way Either way, like Donizetti, she’s as great at over the top as she is as singing and acting.

Although the Laurent Pelly production is new to the Met, it has already been done with Ms. Dessay and her Tonio, Juan Diego Flórez, in Vienna and London where the production was co-produced. Mr. Florez got most of the press for getting a rare encore for the aria "Ah! mes amis" and its 9 high Cs. The encore was hardly a surprise since it was widely expected; Flórez sang one in Milan for the same aria last year, breaking a rule put in place by none other than Toscanini, and the Met broke its own rule before by giving Pavarotti one for "Ah! mes amis" in 1984. The whole audience seemed to know that the whole charade was bogus. Everyone dutifully cheered and applauded for minutes until Flórez meekly bowed at the audience motioned to conductor Marco Armiliato to begin again and did in fact sing it better the second time than the first. It was great fun but I had the nagging feeling I had participated in something slightly bogus. Its OK since Flórez sang the aria so effortlessly it was hard remember most tenors can’t sing it at all, his ease at the high notes certainly beat out my memory of Pavarotti singing the same thing, he seemed to be reaching a bit. I have heard many women who sounded great in the bel canto repertory but Juan Diego Flórez is the fist man I know who completely owns the genre.

Donizetti is just so much pretty fluff but that’s just fine once in a while. The Met probably put his work on for opening night and the last new production galas is fine because they are fun and the gala audiences are probably looking for fluff for their $5000.00 opera plus dinner. Fortunately we got Peter Grimes, Satyagraha, Tristan und Isolde and other serious nights in between.