On Saturday afternoon I saw the last Met opera I'll be attending this season, La fille du régiment. In spite of the work's popularity - this is one of Donizetti's finest comic operas - I hadn't seen a performance in many years and had been looking foward to revisiting an old favorite. I was moreover greatly interested in hearing the singing of its two stars, soprano Pretty Yende and tenor Javier Camarena.
It's hard to believe today that La fille, with libretto by such experienced writers as Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-François Bayard, could ever have been anything but a huge success. Such, however, was unhappily not the case. While there may have been some technical difficulties at the 1840 Opéra-Comique premiere - what worse opera for a tenor who could not sing on key? - the real problem was the outrage French critics felt at the adulation accorded this Italian composer ever since the 1837 French premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor. Hector Berlioz, then still struggling for recogniton of his own compositions, was among the most disgruntled. And certainly he had reason to be envious. Donizetti was then at the height of his powers. Following the retirement of Rossini and the death of Bellini. Donizetti was without question the premiere composer of bel canto opera. However hostile the critics may have been, Donizetti had no problem whatsoever winning over the French public to the extent that years later La fille's Act II Salut à la France became something of a national anthem.
La fille itself is one of those wonderful comic operas in which a totally clichéd plot, so slight it's not worth describing here, exists only as an excuse for the singing of glorious arias. And there are certainly no shortage of these, most notably Tonio's Act I crowdpleaser Ah! Mes amis … Pour mon âme with its fearsome nine high C's that pose a challenge for even the most accomplished tenors. But there are other arias equally fine if not so riveting. These include Marie's Act I Il faut partir and Tonio's Act II Pour me rapprocher de Marie.
One could hardly have asked for a finer cast than that which appeared onstage Saturday afternoon. Tenor Javier Camarena, whom I saw make Met history several years ago when he was called back for an encore at a Rossini performance, had no trouble handling the high C's in Ah! Mes amis … Pour mon âme. The aria not surprisingly brought down the house and Camarena once again deservedly performed an encore. Soprano Pretty Yende, whom I saw on Saturday for the first time at the Met, was a revelation for the ease with which she handled her difficult bel canto arias. Meanwhile, Met stalwart mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe was so fine as the eccentric Marquise of Berkenfield that one wished the part were larger. And for a celebrity turn, Hollywood star Kathleen Turner made her Met debut with this opera in the speaking role of the Duchess of Krakenthorp.
Conductor Enrique Mazzola has led a large number of bel canto operas during his career and showed himself quite capable here. He gave the singers every opportunity to display their vocal prowess.
The one problem I had was that the 2008 production by Laurent Pelly frivolously updated the action of the opera to World War I. I've never cared in the first place for the practice of updating operas for the sake of novelty. Though it may not have been apparent in 2008, it was singularly inappropriate this year when the world has only just finished honoring the war's centennial. The four year observance forced everyone to once again view stories and photos of the horrors unleashed during the second decade of the twentieth century. We definitely didn't need to be reminded of them at a performance of a comic opera.
Looking back, this was an excellent season at the Met, at least as far as the operas I attended, and I could not have wished for a better way to end it than Saturday's fine performance.
No comments:
Post a Comment