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| Natalie Dessay & Juan Diego Florez - photo by Ken Howard |
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"La Fille du Régiment" (The Daughter of the Regiment), the 1840 opéra-comique by composer Gaetano Donizetti and librettists Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-François-Alfred Bayard, wringing comedy from the grim subjects of war and soldiers, seems to show up at the Metropolitan Opera at times of war, both 'popular' and 'unpopular'-to take the sting out or encourage patriotism -with Frieda Hempel during World War One, Lily Pons during World War Two, Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti in the Vietnam War era, and now with the sparkling team of Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez, paced by Marco Armiliato. This comedy has always had serious underpinnings-even apart from its martial subject, its protagonists sing elegiac arias when their love is frustrated-and this new Met production by Laurent Pelly, director and costumer, and Chantal Thomas, set designer, updated to World War One and shared with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London, and the Wiener Staatsoper, in Vienna, features serious-looking soldiers, with serious guns and booze, instead of the bumbling, Keystone Kops-style silly soldiers of recent past productions, with Sutherland here and Beverly Sills at the New York City Opera. "Fille" opened on April 21 and the fourth of eight performances, on May 2, is discussed in this review.
Her milieu stacks of laundry and clothesline hung with long-johns, Dessay makes a sassy tomboy of Marie, the regiment's mascot, workhorse, and singer designate of its regimental songs, who enters carrying a load of wash and wearing soldier's pants and boots, suspenders and man's undershirt, wields an iron like a weapon, flexes her muscles and trades high fives with the soldiers, but is not afraid to display a bad temper, push the men around when crossed, and swear a blue streak, "merde" and "la vache" rolling easily off her tongue. Descents into a low octave for a joke, taking a pratfall, and being hoisted aloft while singing crystalline high D and E-flat are part of her comic arsenal. When Alessandro Corbelli, as Sergeant Sulpice, tickles her during their duet, her giggle is a cascade of coloratura. In Act Two, Dessay's Marie, taken under the wing of her newfound relative, the Marquise de Berkenfield and plainly ill-at-ease in her new finery, in succession twitters a dusty aria antica, in her singing lesson scene; lyrically laments separation from the ones she loves in an exquisite legato "Par le rang et par l'opulence;" and rejoins her comrades for an ebulliently embellished "Salut à la France."
As her love, Tonio, boyish in something like lederhosen, Flórez stuns audience and regiment alike with ringing high B-flats, in "Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête," before stopping the show, in "Pour mon âme," with eight perfectly-placed quick high Cs plus one sustained interpolated one. No encore, though, as on the first night, despite thunderous applause that went on far longer than the aria's duration. Flórez eloquently pleads his suit for Marie to the Marquise, caressing the lines of "Pour me rapprocher de Marie" and capping his effort with a bright high C-sharp.
During their lilting duet, "Depuis l'instant où, dans mes bras ... De cet aveu si tendre," Dessay peels potatoes, diligently dividing them into a pot of potatoes and a pot of peels, until Flórez's earnest profession of love makes her lose track. When she turns the KP duty over to him during her confession, he makes it through one potato before he gives up, too smitten with her to work, and they end with her leaping up into his arms for a kiss, legs around his waist, remaining that way throughout the ovation and until forcibly separated by Corbelli. When Marie, Tonio, and Sulpice have a joyous reunion at the Marquise's château, Dessay, Flórez and Corbelli turn their trio into a music hall song-and-dance number, as choreographed by Laura Scozzi. At the climax of the opera, Tonio returns to the château, rolling in atop an armored tank, prepared for major combat, over Marie, with the tottery, doddering nobility of Europe.
Felicity Palmer is a Marquise to reckon with. While the role is no Donizetti, Rossini or Bellini coloratura mezzo-soprano lead, it helps if the singer of "Pour une femme de mon nom" has a bel canto background, which Palmer certainly does. Here, the self-absorbed, self-important Marquise presumes that the embattled villagers-pots and pails, their helmets; rakes, hoes and a music stand, their weapons; and furniture and mattresses, their barricade-are appealing for her protection when they begin their prayer, "Sainte Madonne! Douce patronne!" Not until they exhort the "Vierge Marie," does she notice the statue of Mary and her mistake. In this "Fille," not only the Marquise, in the lesson scene, but also Marie, in "Salut à la France," and Sulpice, accompanying Palmer's Marquise in a striking, impromptu verse of "Che faro senza Euridice," from Gluck's "Orfeo," get to bang on the piano keys.
Her one scene increased to two, actress Marian Seldes makes a formidable Duchesse de Krakenthorp, aunt, here, instead of mother of Marie's intended, haughtily able to command the orchestra to cease playing and château doors to open for her, and is made to prattle on in Franglais, in Agathe Mélinand's rewrite of the dialogue, about her charge's "obligations olympiques" on the "bobsled team" preventing him from attending the wedding ceremony.
Donald Maxwell, as the Marquise's put-upon butler, Hortensius; Jack Wetherall, as the notary, making an entrance, for some reason, through the Marquise's fireplace; Roger Andrews as a corporal; and David Frye as a villager are the other soloists.
Giving new meaning to the idea of topographical maps, the army camp, and hills and mountains of this Tyrolean village, in Act One, are all composed up of maps of Europe. A suggestion of the château, placed amidst these maps, with cutout walls and picture frames, soon filled with the faces of the soldiers seeking their beloved 'daughter,' Marie, and radiators in addition to the fireplace, is Thomas' setting for Act Two. A period portrait of a soldier, his lady love, and their flowers, labeled "Baromètres de l'Amour," descends from the ceiling during Marie and Tonio's love duet, as does a map of France during "Salut à la France," and a crowing rooster, symbol of France, during this anthem's reprise in the finale.
Remaining performances of "La Fille du Régiment" are on May 5, 8 and 12 at 8 pm, the last with Barry Banks for Flórez, and 16 at 7:30 pm, with Joseph Colaneri for Armiliato. For tickets, from $15 to 320, if any remain, go to the Met box office at Lincoln Center, visit www.metopera.org, or call 212/362-6000.
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