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The Foundling and the Duchess München
Nationaltheater
06/28/2025 - & December 22, 25, 28, 31, 2024, January 3, 6, July 1*, 2025
Gaetano Donizetti: La Fille du régiment
Pretty Yende/Serena Sáenz* (Marie), Dorothea Röschmann (La marquise de Berkenfield), Sunnyi Melles (La duchesse de Crakentorp), Xabier Anduaga/Lawrence Brownlee* (Tonio), Misha Kiria (Sulpice), Martin Snell (Hortensius), Christian Rieger (Un caporal), Dafydd Jones (Un paysan)
Chor der Bayerischen Staatsoper, Christoph Heil (chorus master), Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Stefano Montanari (conductor)
Damiano Michieletto (stage director), Paolo Fantin (sets), Agostino Cavalca (costumes), Alessandro Carletti (lights), Thomas Wilhelm (choreography), Saskia Kruse, Mattia Palma (dramaturgy)
M. Kiria, S. Sáenz (© Geoffroy Schied)
Arguably the weakest of Donizetti’s mature period operas, La Fille du régiment (1840) lacks both the comedic and musical genius of his most famous comedies L’elisir d’amore (1832) and Don Pasquale (1843). Unsurprisingly, Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich’s venerable opera house, hadn’t produced it in ninety years prior to the present production, which premiered last December.
Poorly received by critics – including Berlioz – at its Paris premiere, the work enjoyed some sporadic success thanks to various sopranos who sang the title role of Marie, including Jenny Lind (1820‑1877), Henriette Sontag (1806‑1854), Adelina Patti (1843‑1919), Marcella Sembrich (1858‑1935), Luisa Tetrazzini (1871‑1940) and Frieda Hempel (1885‑1955). During WWII, the MET revived La Fille du regiment for French coloratura Lily Pons (1898‑1976) in solidarity with German-occupied France (think the patriotic soprano aria, “Salut à la France”). In the sixties and seventies, it was a vehicle for coloraturas Beverly Sills (1929‑2007) and Joan Sutherland (1926‑2010).
Following revivals with Sutherland with the likes of Alfredo Kraus (1929‑1999) and especially Luciano Pavarotti (1935‑2007), the focus of the opera shifted to the opera’s tenor role, Tonio, due to the Act I aria “Ah mes amis ! Quel jour de fête”, considered the “Mount Everest” for tenors, with its demanding cabaletta “Pour mon âme” and its string of eight high Cs. A ninth, unwritten high C is sometimes added, and more recently “show‑off” tenors have performed the aria with eighteen high Cs! This aria is the reason for opera’s present day popularity.
Obviously, to justify such a lightweight work, the right tenor must be secured. Lawrence Brownlee is one of today’s leading coloratura tenors whose singing I’ve enjoyed in several Rossini works (Il barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, Le Comte Ory). Unfortunately, his voice has now changed; it’s lost its freshness and acquired an unpleasant metallic edge, especially in the upper register. He was able to hit the monumental high Cs in the demanding aria “Ah mes amis ! Quel jour de fête”, but the high notes were painfully strained. Happily though, Brownlee is still an accomplished actor, and a most credibly sweet, naive Tyrolese country boy.
Spanish soprano Serena Sáenz was the uncontested star of the performance. During Madrid’s Teatro Real’s 2022‑2023 season, she sang the secondary role of Lisa in La sonnambula, opposite Jessica Pratt’s Amina. What a meteoric rise! In just under three years, Sáenz went from La sonnambula’s Lisa to La Fille du regiment’s Marie. This is reminiscent of Renata Scotto, who went from singing Lisa (opposite Maria Callas’s Amina) in Edinburgh in 1957, eventually replacing Callas in the production. I predict an equally brilliant career for this young singer. Sáenz’s stage presence was mesmerising, remaining the focus of attention even when not singing. She was completely credible as the regiment’s jovial vivandière in Act I, and disarmingly charming as an aristocrat‑in‑training in Act II. Her rendition of the melancholy Act I aria “Il faut partir” was touching and musically luminous.
Georgian bass Misha Kiria was a great choice for the role of Sulpice. Endowed with splendidly comedic verve, he needed merely to look at another singer or the public to generate laughs. In previous Italian roles, such as Don Geronio in Madrid’s Il Turco in Italia, and in Toronto’s Don Pasquale, Kiria impressed with both his ductile deep basso and his delectable diction. In the present role, he impressed mostly as a natural comedian. His French diction, however, was rather tentative.
Two other supporting roles, aristocrats La marquise de Berkenfield and La duchesse de Crakentorp, are usually reserved for semi‑retired singers or beloved elderly actresses. Dorothea Röschmann is rather young to be La marquise de Berkenfield and was in too healthy a voice for the role. She also brilliantly portrayed the noble lady, revealed to be Marie’s mother who had abandoned her at childbirth to avoid a scandal. One could sense this aristocrat was kind, tender (her affair in younger years) and weak (abandoning her baby; her concern for what others think of her).
As for La duchesse de Crakentorp, a non‑singing role, she was portrayed by Swiss‑Hungarian actress Sunnyi Melles, famous for her role in Ruben Ostland’s The Triangle of Sadness (2022) and previously admired in another spoken role, this time en travesti: the drunkard prison guard Frosch in Minkowski’s Die Fledermaus in Madrid.
I was initially intrigued what Damiano Michieletto, today’s most brilliant opera director, would do with such a mediocre work. If anyone could salvage this opera, it would be him. Signor Michieletto’s stagings of Don Giovanni and Les Contes d’Hoffmann for Venice; Salome and Médée for La Scala and Rossini’s Otello for Frankfurt; and Don Quichotte and Il barbiere di Siviglia for the Paris Opera are the best I’ve ever seen.
He did indeed salvage this work, by ingeniously using the spoken role of La duchesse de Crakentorp as a narrator for the preposterous story. Melles was such a detestable, washed up old monster (think Polanski’s 1967 film, Fearless Vampire Killers) that the public immediately sided with Tonio, the regiment and the great unwashed. Moreover, this arrogant duchess was penniless and coveted Marie’s dowry. So ignominious was she that during Marie’s wedding ceremony to her effeminate, wimpy nephew Scipion (mon chouchou, as she amusingly called him), she revealed that Marie was an illegitimate child, abandoned and raised by the regiment.
Paolo Fantin’s sets were brilliant: stylized, sparse but imaginative. The beautiful Tyrol was believably presented via a true to life canvas from which the terrified country folk emerged at the beginning of the opera. When it’s discovered that the foundling Marie is of noble birth, she’s lifted into a tableau in her mother’s castle, extracted from the canvas. The peeled off Tyrol scenery is promptly folded up and given to Marie as a memento of her past, a truly brilliant idea.
In Act II, a huge painting is being installed at the Berkenfield castle. At first we see an empty frame, then the castle’s effete pageboys hesitantly set up Marie’s canvas of the Tyrol forest. They dance to the rhythm of the quaint waltz that opens the act. When the situation at the wedding ceremony becomes intolerable, Tonio and the brave regiment come to the rescue, reaching through the canvas in a clin d’œil to Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo (1985).
La marquise de Berkenfield’s heart softens, refusing to let Marie marry against her will, and blesses her union with Tonio. La duchesse de Crakentorp and her grotesque aristocratic acolytes are horrified and scatter from the castle. The silly comedy, wisely not taking itself too seriously, ends on a happy note. Fantin’s stylized sets, Brownlee’s high Cs, Sáenz’s charisma and voice, and most of all Melles’s fossilised duchesse de Crakentorp will long be remembered by this delighted public – myself included.
Ossama el Naggar
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