Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment: Smiles and Tears

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On March 2, movie houses around the globe will screen Gaetano Donizetti’s opéra comique, La Fille du régiment (1840), live from the Metropolitan. The performance will star the soprano Pretty Yende and the tenor Javier Camarena. If until the late 1960s, general managers would want to stage the opera for a favorite soprano, since then it has been programmed subject to the availability of a tenor with a very secure upper register. Indeed, absent a tenor blessed with a high extension, La Fille du régiment will not be on the boards. 

The Met premiere of Donizetti’s work was staged in 1902 for Marcella Sembrich; it was revived in 1917-18 for Frieda Hempel. Our story begins in December 1940 when a new production was mounted for the company’s then reigning coloratura, Lily Pons. By that time, France had been at war with Germany for more than a year; the United States would enter the conflict a year later. Newspapers all over the country carried a photograph of the finale of La Fille du régiment in which, in place of the traditional French Tricolor, the flag of France occupied by the Nazis, French-born Pons waved the Cross of Lorraine of General Charles De Gaulle’s Free French. The Met orchestra played first “La Marseillaise” and then, as the Stars and Stripes were brought to the front of the stage and the Cross of Lorraine was dipped in tribute, “The Star Spangled Banner.” Some among those present were sure to remember that in 1918, three days after the Armistice, Hempel had interpolated the moving World War I anthem, “Keep the Home Fires Burning.” 

Pons was the Met’s preeminent coloratura from her 1931 debut to her departure from the company nearly three decades later. Through concerts, movies, radio, and recordings, her name had become a household word. Her rendition of “Salut à la France (Hail to France)” shows off the technique that captivated her fans. The cadenza at the aria’s conclusion, replete with a flute accompaniment reminiscent of the “Mad Scene” of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, exploits her fluency in embellishment and astonishing ease in alt, in the very highest notes of the soprano range.

Thirty years later, the Met revived La Fille du régiment. The new production brandished two superstars, the soprano Joan Sutherland and the tenor Luciano Pavarotti. On February 17, 1972, when Pavarotti nailed the nine high Cs of his first act aria “Ah, mes amis (Ah, my friends),” often omitted by less intrepid singers, the audience belonged to him, and since then audiences will not be denied the signature moment of the evening. And what is more, spectators, at least at the Met since Juan Diego Flórez’s stunning feat in 2008, consider an encore obligatory. Here is Pavarotti as he fires off his volley of high Cs in a live 1967 London performance..

The popularity of La Fille du régiment owes much to the virtuosic hurdles it poses to the principal singers. But Donizetti’s rich melodies and elegiac manner are also intrinsic to the score. At the end of Act I, Marie, the daughter of the regiment, bids a tearful farewell to her cherished troops. “Il faut partir (I must leave)” summons the soprano’s most long-breathed legato, an opportunity that Beverly Sills embraces in this 1970 live performance.

Tonio, the tenor role, also has a long moment of deep sentiment. In Act II, he pleads with Marie’s mother for permission to marry his beloved. Flórez’s elegant style is a perfect match for the elegant phrases of “Pour me rapprocher de Marie (To bring me close to Marie)” in this 2007 Vienna performance.

I Puritani I: Sopranos

Three titles by Vincenzo Bellini have been presented during the Met’s 2013-14 season. This feast for Belliniphiles is unprecedented in the company’s history. Each of the operas has featured at least one excellent individual performance, sometimes more. In the first cast of Norma, only Sandra Radvanovsky’s Druid priestess met the measure; in the second cast, Angela Meade found a worthy partner in Jamie Barton for the crucial Norma-Adalgisa duets. I reported on the very satisfying La Sonnambula in my April 6 post. I Puritani will be broadcast this coming Saturday, May 3.

When the 1976 Puritani production was new, Ming Cho Lee’s sets were meant to look like 19th-century pastel illustrations; Sandro Sequi’s direction recalled with affection the attitudes of 19th-century divas and divos. The subtle lighting and the texture of the show have degraded over time. At the premiere of the April 17 revival, the staging of the ensemble consisted of choristers moseying on and off the stage; some principals reacted to the drama with intent, others with standard gesticulation. The Elvira, Olga Peteyatko, a highly touted Russian coloratura, made her Met debut. She sang with clean fioriture (minus a fully developed trill), attention to the text and the theatrical moment. Yet for me, the full frisson was missing. Peteyatko’s agreeable tone lacked individuality; her acting was no more than acceptable. In the inevitable comparison with her most recent predecessor, Anna Netrebko is off the mark in dexterity, lacking even a rudimentary trill, but she sings much of the role beautifully and creates a riveting character. Peteyatko’s Arturo, Lawrence Brownlee, met his role’s daunting demands with courage and accuracy but without his customary ease. His beautiful tenore di grazia, so effective in Rossini, was sometimes stressed by Belllini’s more strenuous Arturo.

The Met’s first Puritani was presented during the company’s inaugural season, 1883-84, but only once. The most influential reviewers, confirmed Wagnerites, were dismissive of the bel canto repertory although fulsome in praise for the Elvira, Marcella Sembrich. I did not include an example of her singing in my post on Sonnambula. Her recording of Elvira’s “Qui la voce” and its cabaletta “Vien diletto” gives more pleasure and a better sense of her voice and her formidable technique.

 


The return of Puritani to the repertoire in 1918 marked a turn in the fortunes of bel canto: the critical establishment that had excoriated Bellini had begun to acknowledge his genius. The superb Met cast apparently did full justice to the score. To judge by this recording of Maria Barrientos, the Elvira, it must have been quite a night. Note: I suggest that you lower the volume for this excerpt.

 

Maria Callas was responsible for the resurrection of many bel canto operas in the mid-20th century. I Puritani had special significance for her. At the beginning of her career in Italy, she was known as a dramatic soprano. In January 1949, she was engaged in Venice for Brünnhilde. The conductor of the Wagner, Tullio Serafin, knew Callas’s voice and asked her to step in for an indisposed colleague just five days before the first night of Puritani. She had never sung the role of Elvira. She learned it on the spot—and the Valkyrie had found her true calling in the bel canto world. For the full impact of her dark, tragic Elvira, listen to this live excerpt from the May 29, 1952 performance in Mexico City, site of early international triumphs for Callas. She emerges clearly from the aural mess and prevails against a conductor who merely beats time and a chorus that seems to be sight-reading. This is the finale to Act I, the first of Elvira’s three mad scenes.

 

To Joan Sutherland goes a large measure of the credit for the renewal of interest in I Puritani at the Met. The 1976 production mounted for her has been followed by five revivals. Here she is in 1962, in Elvira’s entrance aria.



My next post will treat Puritani tenors and basses.

Sleepwalkers

In the current Met revival of La Sonnambula, as heard on March 25, Diana Damrau sang Amina with an instrument that is richer with each passing season, with no diminution of dexterity and comfort in alt, with her customary feeling and energy The two cartwheels she turned during "Ah, non giunge" summed up the joy of the character and of the performer at ease with the physical and vocal athletics of the part. The Elvino of Javier Camarena was the surprise of the evening. His voice is warm, fluent, responsive to a wide dynamic range, comfortable at the top. If his phrasing is a tad less impeccable that that of Flórez in the role (particularly at the beginning) it still reflects accomplished belcantism. The other principal singers were disappointing--Rachelle Durkin a wiry Lisa, Michele Pertusi, a Rodolfo insecure of pitch, woolly of tone. Conductor Marco Armiliato was accommodating, not inspiring.

The Met's first Amina, Marcella Sembrich, starred in La Sonnambula a few weeks after her tremendously successful debut as Lucia in 1883 in the company's inaugural season. Her 1904 recording (on YouTube) of the cabaletta, "Ah, non giunge," documents her fluency, not the renowned beauty of her timbre. In 1910, Elvira de Hidalgo, the future teacher of Maria Callas, sang the role with the company, although only twice. Reviewers were unanimous in their assessments of prodigious technique and shrill timbre, attributes in evidence in her recording of "Ah, non giunge" (on YouTube). The plangency of the Met's next Amina (1916), Maria Barrientos, emerges clearly from her 1920 rendition of the aria. The soprano exploits her phenomenal battery of fioriture in this showcase for coloratura feats and flights, but also rescues the deering-do from mere stunt with taste, personality, charm, liquid tone, and a remarkable command of the messa di voce, the long-held crescendo-diminuendo.

 The Met's next Amina ought to have been Amelita Galli-Curci, the superstar engaged to open the 1921-22 season, the first after the death of Caruso. Galli-Curci had sung the role to great acclaim at New York's Lexington Theatre with the Chicago company on the occasion of Tito Schipa's spring 1920 New York debut. The sensitive noctambulist certainly fit Galli-Curci's gentle persona and the limpid, petal-soft sound for which she was famous. During her nine-season-long Met career, she never sang the role with the company, nor did she include any of its music in her interpolations during the "Lesson Scene" from Il Barbiere di Siviglia. A recording of the Act I duet with Schipa captures what might have been heard at the Met.

 The opera was broadcast from the Met stage in 1933 and 1935 with Lily Pons, the second time with Giacomo Lauri-Volpi. To my knowledge, no transcriptions of these broadcasts are extant.

Before the reawakening of La Sonnambula on 39th Street in 1963 for Joan Sutherland, aficionados had to go elsewhere to hear this trove of melody. The opera had achieved wide recognition when Callas performed it at La Scala in 1955, in a production directed by Luchino Visconti and conducted by Leonard Bernstein. There is no better example of the composer's sublime lyricism than the Act I duet as rendered by Callas and Cesare Valletti, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

  During the Scala's 1957 trip to the Edinburgh Festival, Callas had to withdraw during a run of Sonnambulas. This then became the first big step in the international career of her replacement, twenty-three-year-old Renata Scotto. She would sing Amina at the Met seven times. My memory of her exquisite phrasing and sweet tone in 1972 is sustained by the transcription of the duet, with Alfredo Kraus, from Venice, 1961.

 

I close this cursory survey of exemplars of Bellinian bel canto with a late-1940s recording of "Vi ravviso," sung with utter scrupulousness to suavity of line by the very young Cesare Siepi, already master of the most beautiful bass voice of his generation.