To London, to see Donizetti's La fille du régiment at the Royal Opera House. We booked to see this after seeing and enjoying Don Pasquale at Nevill Holt opera - prior to that I was completely unfamiliar with Donizetti.
One of the pleasures associated with writing entries for this blog is the opportunity to spend time doing background research and learning entirely new things. I now know that Don Pasquale (which had its debut in 1843) is widely regarded as the last great Italian opera buffa (comic opera), harking back as it does to works such as Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (1786) and Rossini's The Barber of Seville (1816).
By contrast, the earlier La Fille du régiment, written in 1840, actually belongs to the French tradition of opéra comique, which, despite its name, simply means an opera with spoken dialogue (rather than a sung recitative) combined with arias. It has much in common with what would later become operettas and, eventually, musicals.
A straightforward run down on the 16.04 and a cab to the junction of Long Acre and Bow Street. A measured stroll through Covent Garden for a quick peek in Ralph Lauren on King Street (no socks left in the sale - shame!) and then back to the ROH for light refreshments and people watching in the Royal Opera House Café.
To our excellent seats in the front row of the Donald Gordon Grand Tier:
And so to the opera itself. I fully confess that at the time that we booked our tickets, and for some time thereafter, I had no idea just what kind of treat we were in for.
The production was a revival of Laurent Pelly's celebrated staging, now famous because it avoids military realism in favour of theatrical whimsy: throughout much of the production, the action takes place against a backdrop of enormous unfolded maps, the regiment behaves like an oversized comic family and the comedy grows naturally out of individual's characters rather than artificially introduced slapstick.
The cast were headed by Spanish soprano Sara Blanch, making her ROH debut as Marie, and Juan Diego Flórez as Tonio. Flórez first sang Tonio in Pelly's original production at Covent Garden in 2007 and, though we didn't fully appreciate it at the time, Flórez's is now regarded as one of the world's greatest portrayals of Tonio, and for those in the know (which did not include us!) his return to Covent Garden was one of the principal attractions of the revival.
Although Tonio is a rather naïve Tyrolean peasant, Donizetti gave him one of opera's greatest vocal showpieces. The Act 1 aria "Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!" contains a sequence of nine high Cs, all intended to be sung full voice (not falsetto) and negotiating them has become something of an operatic rite of passage.
To put this in some context, Luciano Pavarotti earned the nickname "King of the High Cs" after singing Tonio at the Royal Opera House in 1966 and his performance there was one of the events that launched his international career. Although stylistically very different, Flórez's portrayal of Tonio is now talked about in the same breath as Pavarotti's.
Flórez did not disappoint, and the end of the aria in question gave rise to the longest, loudest and most enthusiastic mid-performance ovation we have seen. Flórez, who ended the aria with arm held aloft, maintained the pose until the applause died away and then, feigning muscle-cramps, pretended to pull his raised arm down with his other hand - leading to yet more applause.
Mention should also be made of Tamsin Greig - yes, the comic actor of Black Books, Green Wing, Episodes and Friday Night Dinner fame - as the Duchesse de Crakentorp. This is a famous, entirely spoken cameo role; since it requires no singing, opera companies frequently cast famous actresses, comedians, or special guest personalities to play the supercilious and domineering prospective mother-in-law - and convention has it that topical ad-libs are, if not de rigueur, certainly welcomed.
In the original 2007 ROH production, the role was taken by Dawn French; others who have since played the part include Miranda Richardson and - in a rare instance where a legendary opera soprano took the non-singing comic role (and humorously added an unscripted aria of her own) - Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.
On this night (and, according to reviews, every other night!) there were times when Tamsin Greig’s performance came close to stealing the show, ad libbing as she did about "10 Downing Street" and "Andy Burnham" on the day of his taking over as PM. To the audience's delight she maintained her haughty character right up to and during the curtain call - and here is a somewhat blurry and hastily snatched shot of one of those curtain calls:
Out, to quickly find a cab that got us back to St Pancras in time for the 23.35 and a straightforward run home, with time to reflect on what had been a truly memorable evening.
Bed by around 02.00.
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