(Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez. Photos: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)
I saw the encore screening of the Metropolitan Opera's broadcast of La Fille du Regiment on Sunday and it was a total blast - probably the most entertaining broadcast this season and certainly one of my favorite Met broadcasts in the two years that they have been doing these things (my favorite is still last season's Eugene Onegin with Renee Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky). Director Laurent Pelly's production worked remarkably well on the screen, with its frenetic, non-stop but never overly fussy stage business. And the action and dialogue were genuinely funny. Donizetti's very tuneful score went down very easily, and the opera's structure was more like a musical comedy than a long dramatic opera, with musical "songs" separated by chunks of expository dialogue.
The cast was superb, with Natalie Dessay as a very hyper Marie, who played the role as an adorable awkward tomboy. Juan Diego Florez was Tonio, her romantic foil, and he gamely jumped and played along but really won the audience over with his golden voice: nine high C's effortlessy tossed off at the end of Act One and a gorgeous aria in Act Two that melted hearts. Also good: Felicity Palmer as the Marquise of Berkenfield, the opera's sort-of villainess, and Alessandro Corbelli as Sargent Sulpice, Marie's adoptive father. Marian Seldes played the Duchesse of Krakentorp, a dialogue only role, but she looked awkward through most of her scenes.
This was the last Met broadcast of the season. Next year, there will 11 broadcasts - even more than there were this season - and they will be spread out over the entire season instead of just in the winter/spring. There are a bunch of good ones too: Salome with Karita Mattila, Thaïs with Reneé Fleming, Philip Glass' Doctor Atomic to name a few. I'll be closer to New York next year so maybe I'll see some of these live, but you can't beat the price here - for $25 at the movies, you get a fluffy chair and excellent views of the singers, where you'd have to stand or sit in the clouds at the opera house.
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