Intermezzo

The return of the underpants

La fille du régiment - Royal Opera House, 25 April 2012

Once you discover why the chicken crossed the road, the joke swiftly grows stale. Several viewings down the line, I feel the same way about Laurent Pelly’s production. The dancing underpants, the drag charladies, even the armoured tank are all funny, but they rely on novelty for their impact. And if the visual humour doesn’t hit the mark, Pelly’s splashy shallows leave little else to savour. Only the lucky first-timers (a fair proportion of Wednesday’s audience judging by the guffaws) can have had their ribs comprehensively tickled.

Vienna got Caballé; New York got Te Kanawa

La fille for less

Thanks to reader Richard for spotting this offer on the Royal Opera House's La fille du régiment.

Stalls tickets for the show on 7 May are £75 (less than half price) with the code METROREG (which you need to enter on the right hand side of the main production page before you select the show date). Alternatively, you can book by phone using the secret password "Metro Regiment Offer".

The discount is supposedly valid for the 21 April show as well, but didn't work when I tried it - you may have better luck.

Covent Garden's Duchesse de Crackentorp revealed

Cue the sound of scraped barrels.  The Royal Opera House's imminent revival of La fille du régiment will feature none other than Tory trouper Ann Widdecombe in the role of  Duchesse de Crackentorp.

Make way for the Duchess, possums - UPDATED

*******UPDATE**********

I received the tip below from *two* fairly reliable sources, but it's now been contradicted by another reliable one.  So who knows. Maybe "TBC" will take the stage after all .......

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Intermezzo understands that Ann Murray won't be the only Dame on stage when La Fille du régiment opens at the Royal Opera House next spring.  

Covent Garden have groped around and found something special down under. They're lining up the glads to welcome one of our little colonial friends to the spectacle - and no it's not Kiri te Kanawa.

If you haven't guessed by now (you haven't? seriously? )  take a look below.

La fille du regiment, Royal Opera House {{{LOL}}}

La Fille du régiment - Royal Opera House, 17 May 2010

This was my fifth or so viewing of Laurent Pelly’s now-classic production, and I have to confess – this time it was easier to understand how the cast get through the night without cracking up. The humour relies on visual gags which inevitably tire eventually - the line of dancing underpants, the housemaids’ choreographed dusting, even the final coup de theatre as Juan Diego Flórez rolls in to save the day atop a tank. Agathe Mélinand's crudely updated dialogue is hardly timeless either. But I could forgive the uncontrolled laughter of the other 99% of the audience – I was there once. And let’s face it, as comic operas go, La Fille du régiment is actually not that funny on the page nor musically inventive enough to compensate. It needs Pelly’s interventions more than it needs preserving in aspic.

La Fille du regiment battles through at Holland Park

La Fille du Régiment  - Opera Holland Park, 4 June 2008

Opera Holland Park - now with wings for added protection. As you can just about see on the right of the pic above, this year's canopy improvements include side panels - in case we ever get any sun? They were no barrier to the small tweety birds that rocketed over the orchestra's heads from time to time. But, seated at the side, I was grateful to be shielded from a chilly breeze. 

It doesn't seem that long since La Fille was entertaining us at Covent Garden. William Kerley's production for OHP is necessarily less ambitious and less reliant on extraneous visual jokes. Stripped back to the direct humour of the music and libretto, it's an altogether less slapstick proposition.  With a vaguely period setting that made sensible use of the natural backdrop of Holland House, and set elements cunningly concealed in giant wooden triangles (above), to be whipped out at the appropriate moment, the plight of Marie is clearly placed at the centre of the action.

Hye-Youn Lee was a great find for the title role. Petite and spunky, she rattled effortlessly through the coloratura in a clear girlish tone. Accuracy seemed to be her main goal, and she could do with a bit more light and shade in the voice, but she at least had a surer grip of the French language than most other cast members.

Luciano Botelho could body-double for Juan Diego Flórez, and he has the same attractive ring to his voice. He did make the role of Tonio sound like the hard work it undoubtedly is, with a couple of his high C's in Ah! Mes amis shooting wide, but I wondered if this was simply nerves. (Perhaps he just needed a beer or two?)

Graeme Broadbent didn't seem sure whether he was George Clooney or Basil Fawlty, but he sang Sulpice with heart and conviction. Sarah Pring's Marquise de Birkenfeld was maybe a little too sympathetically drawn - more pompousness at the start would have made her revelation more affecting - but she sang attractively. But some of the best singing of the night came from the chorus, especially the men of the regiment, rousing and immaculately schooled.

The orchestra, under Robert Dean, played with tremendous verve and enthusiasm. Not everyone could keep up with the cracking pace, and there were a few ensemble issues from time to time, but they didn't reallly cloud the performance. That was left to the Holland Park peacocks, who joined the performance at start of Act II and lingered with Wagnerian persistence. May I suggest the OHP management check out the toy catalogues?