Gaetano Donizetti - La Fille du regiment / Dessay, Florez, Palmer, Corbelli, French, Campanella, Pelly (Royal Opera House 2007)

This "Fille du Regiment" dvd is a video of the Laurent Pelly production, first debuted at Covent Garden. It was also used at the Metropolitan in a recent series of sold-out performances. This dvd is a welcome release for those who saw or heard the sensational performances, as it has much the same cast.

I was one of the lucky people who saw Florez sing Tonio at the Met this spring. It was an unforgettable experience. After a perfectly sung "Ah mes amis," the audience roared for so long that Florez encored the piece, thus singing 18 high C's in one evening. After the second "Ah mes amis," the entire audience gave him a standing ovation. Although in this dvd there is no encore, there are still 9 high C's, sung with such ease and beauty that he truly makes it look easy. In the second act he also sings a beautiful "Pour me rapprocher de Marie." If anyone was born to sing Tonio it was Florez, whose combination of boyish innocence and vocal agility fit the role like a glove. In 20 years, I dare say people will be bragging that they got to see Florez in Tonio, the same way they brag that they got to see Pavarotti in Elisir or Sutherland in Lucia.

Natalie Dessay's vocal brilliance once matched Florez's -- she was a famous Olympia, Lakme, Ophelia, Queen of the Night, and Zerbinetta (which I saw -- unforgettable). Now, after several surgeries on her nodes, her voice is considerably smaller-scaled and her top no longer always obedient (in her heyday she used to throw high G's into the Doll Song). To compensate, she engages in some frenetic stage business that some found hammy and others cute. I don't mind it, I like the Chaplinesque acting, and her take on Marie as a tomboy. But nevertheless, I was dismayed at how small and shrill her voice can sound. Her voice always had a Gallic edge to it that allowed it to carry to the very back of a huge opera house like the Metropolitan. But now the edge is stronger, and her voice no longer has the easy agility. She's better in the quieter moments of the opera, but in arias like "Chacun le Sait, Chacun le Dit" I had the feeling from the screamed high notes that she was using up her vocal capital quite rapidly.

Laurent Pelly's staging sets the scene in the WW1 era. The stage business and exaggerated dialogue and stage directions opera makes it more operetta than opera, and again, some in the audience the night I saw it found it charming while others found it overdone. Marie in his vision is a real tomboy, dressed in military-like pants and suspenders when we first see her. It's obviously based on the formidable comic gifts of Dessay. Alessandro Corbelli is a real charmer as Sulpice Pingot, as is Felicity Palmer as Marquise de Berkenfield.

The question among opera dvd collectors is, "Which Florez Fille do I get?" Because there's another Florez Fille already on the market, starring Patricia Ciofi as Marie. I think vocally, that dvd is better. Ciofi's is at this point a more substantial instrument than Dessay's, with more color and agility. Florez encores "Ah mes amis" in that video. However, that production has none of the operetta-like charm of the Pelly production. It's a rather serious, even drab affair, and the comic bits of the piece don't work as well. Ciofi is less gifted at comedy than Dessay.

So my reommendation? Get both dvd's. You really can't go wrong with either, as each has qualities the other lacks, but what they both have in common is the Tonio of Juan Diego Florez in all its magnificent glory.

I can see that my judgment of this newest version of "Fille du Regiment' places me in a distinct minority among reviewers here. Perhaps I missed those overriding virtues so many have seen in it, but for my money the performance, except in one area, was about as enjoyable as a root canal. Despite its own absurdities of shifted time setting and even more irrational military alliances, the Ciofi/Florez version, I'd argue, has more to offer grown-up opera lovers than this childish cartoon, a compendium of the excesses and cliches of allegedly "cutting-edge" Regie theater.

First of all, as several others have noticed, there is a marked ugliness distinguishing the sets; indeed, they are eyesores from the opening curtain to the finish, but a necessity for Eurotrash productions ever on guard against the seductiveness of beauty.

Next, all of the characters onstage, principals and choristers, are kept frenetically "busy," on the apparent assumption that the audience is largely composed of Attention Deficit Disorder sufferers. Thus we ascend from an unconvincing chorus line of dancing, pitchfork carrying peasants to a heroine who manically irons, does Chaplin like salutes, and turns cartwheels, and to a hero who late in the action even enters driving a tank onto the stage. As directed here, the usually brilliant singing actress Dessay made me nostalgic for the bad old days of stand and deliver singing, the days when one would no more look at an opera star than stare at a radio. The temptation was strong to shout out to her, "Don't do anything for a change! Just stand there!" Not only did a straining after "too much cute" blemish her performance throughout, but she or her director seemed clueless even to recognize when the show was over. Therefore, during the curtain calls, she repeated certain of her earlier "stage business" maneuvers accompanied by shrieks and parrot-like squawks. Happily, the other principal, the hero sung by Florez, chose or was allowed here to maintain his natural grace and dignity. In my view, the principals were to a person crude caricatures of the more richly comic figures they are in the libretto, and their reconception here is a testimony to the vulgarity of the director. I won't speculate about what the ecstatic reception they were accorded may say about the nascent barbarism of the audience.

Why then the three stars? The lead singers who'd be worth listening to if they were singing the telephone book are the answer. Though I, too, noticed Dessay's tendency toward "too much pressure" on some fortissimo top notes, giving them a scream-like quality, she is a soprano of prodigious coloratura gifts. When she sang softly, and her director, save for making her pull a ridiculous clothes line about the stage, let her be, she sang a particularly beautiful "Il faut partir." Similarly, Florez, freed for several minutes from directorial "busyness," was allowed to sing another wonderful "Ah! mes amis." In these moments, the opera came alive, though they were at odds with the gross overall vision and tendency of the production. Donizetti, Ciofi and Florez - and opera viewers - were better served in the earlier Teatro Carlo Felice revival.

It is wonderful that we are now able to buy DVDs of operas that are still doing the circuits of the major opera houses in both Europe and the United States. I recently acquired the Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez version of `La Fille du Regiment' recorded at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. As soon as I opened the case and saw it was a Virgin Classics release, I knew that the audio and video elements of the package were going to be of a very high standard as was the case of an earlier Virgin Classics purchase of Rossini's `La Grande-Duchesse du Gerolstein' of which I have posted a very positive review. I was not disappointed, as soon as the overture started it was apparent that this was going to be an even more entertaining version of this work than the Patizia Ciofi and Florez version of the same opera from the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa. This latest work is fun to watch all the way through, there are no dull spots, and everyone sings well and is well recorded. If I had to mention one disappointment it would be the somewhat abstract stage-sets used in both acts; the detailed ones from Genoa are significantly better and more interesting. One huge asset (no pun intended) in this version is the presence of Dawn French as the Duchess de Crackentorp. It is almost a quarter of a century since I remember watching her as half of the French and Saunders comedy duo on British television. Her presence here in the second act is quite brief, but every moment she is on the stage, she had me in stitches.

I suppose the major point of interest is, who is the better Marie, the daughter of the Regiment? That is not an easy question to answer. I loved Miss Dessay's voice and the ease with which she was able to accomplish even the most difficult passages. I also enjoyed the way she threw her entire being into the comedic aspects of the role. However, on balance I think the edge goes to Miss Ciofi who, while giving a slightly less boisterous performance and maybe taking a little more effort to sing some of the more difficult sections, is overall the singer/actress with the best presentation and the one I most prefer to watch. Would I be prepared to part with either of these DVDs? Definitely not, both are terrific versions of a comic opera that will appeal to everyone and will give much enjoyment to young and old

I just saw La Fille Du Regiment two days ago at the Metropolitan Opera and the music hasn't stopped playing in my head. After having seen Natalie Dessay as the tragic Lucia Di Lammermoor, it was amazing to see her comedic performance as Marie, the mascot of the regiment. The lyric beauty of her voice is as astonishing as her Chaplinesque routines. She is the Tomboy daughter of the regiment, ironing their clothes, peeling their potatoes while singing of her love for her adopted "fathers." In addition to Dessay's breathtaking coloratura arias, Juan Diego Florez's effortless nine high Cs make this opera a veritable showstopper. The melodies are glorious, the singing and acting are flawless. Donizetti must have had a ball poking fun at his own tragic operas. My only disappointment was the unimpressive set design, which did not detract from my overall enjoyment.

I regard this version as superior to the one with Ciofi because Dessay is in fact a better singer than Ciofi. Florez needs no introduction since he is the reigning light lyric tenor today. Some complain that his voice has a "nasal" quality but in fact that is simply one of its unique identifying features. Most very great singers had uncommon voices, perhaps even ones with a few "defects", that served to make them unique. Callas for example, and Melchior. There are lots of voices with nothing distinctive about them, but Florez is not in that group, fortunately. No praise is too high for his art or his unique vocal instrument.