La fille du régiment at the Liceu

Crazed scenes apart, Donizetti has a capacity to gladden the heart and lift the spirits. Alas, few of his almost 70 operas see the light of day now, although, thanks to the Liceu’s courageous policy of adding unknown and forgotten works to the mix of regular crowd-pleasers, in December 2011, we privileged Barceloneses got to watch Diana Damrau and Juan Diego Flórez in the rarely performed Linda di Chamounix (complete with its own little mad scene).

La fille du régiment is one of Donizetti’s cheeriest and most heart-warming stories (if politically and logically somewhat ridiculous). Definitely opera comique! And definitely written with a star soprano in mind.

The story contains a reasonable amount of tension (though one remains comfortably certain of a positive solution) and absolutely NO madness. It is a ‘sit back and enjoy’ bel canto opera, and the Liceu audience did just that, except when they roused themselves to offer thunderous applause.

The highly successful staging by Laurent Pelly was a co-production of the Met, Covent Garden and the Vienna State Opera, and the only major problem for me was re-structuring my expectations, having already seen it several times and loved it with Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez. Would Sabina Puértolas and Javier Camarena give the same satisfaction? Certainly I had no fear regarding Ewa Podleś, who was her usual characterful self in the role of the bossy, but ultimately vanquished Marquesa de Berkenfield. Podleś, with her forceful voice and expansive range (and unexpected performance at the piano!), has long been an established favourite, and although the singing part was minimal, her acting was on target and a pleasure to watch.

More or less faithful to the Pelly production, the mise-en-scène was a trifle cramped on the Liceu stage but still worked well. The chorus so skillfully led by Conxita Garcia, was, as ever, in top form. This time they were French soldiers who had discovered their ‘fille’ as a tiny abandoned baby and brought her up as their regimental daughter. Now fully grown-up and both much-loved and hard-worked, we encounter Marie in the midst of washing and ironing (with a suspiciously 21st-century iron—hey there, stage director, don’t trip up on tiny details!) the smalls of all her ‘fathers’. Marie, sung by soprano Sabina Puértolas, proved to be up to the Dessay challenge (and indeed, to the marvelous Beverly Sills performance that originally introduced me to this fun opera, back in Boston, nearly 50 years ago). She was in fine voice and sang a spirited and appealing Marie.

After his rich performance as Duke of Mantua in the recent Liceu presentation of Rigoletto, Javier Camarena’s Tonio was surprisingly subdued, to the extent that I wondered whether he was husbanding his voice because of a cold. The audience rousingly insisted that he sing an encore of ‘Ah mes amis’, but his high C’s did not ring out as expected and I wonder whether the call for a repeat was kneejerk rather than truly appreciative. Camarena obliged punctiliously, but not enthusiastically, which made me further aware that he might be struggling that night. I have to confess, I missed Juan Diego Flórez, who sang in rich voice, as if he WAS Tonio.

In the non-singing role of the imperious (and fortune-hunting) Duchess of Krakentorp, arrogantly pushing an arranged marriage with her son (in absentia) onto poor Marie, Bibiana Fernández made the most of the tiny but amusing role, and everybody’s sidekick Sulpice was endearingly performed by Simone Alberghini.

The orchestra, led by Giuseppe Finzi, was sprightly and I think, all in all, the first-night audience left satisfied.