Beautiful singing and vocal fireworks

The opera this evening is Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment or The Daughter of the Regiment. Though Donizetti is Italian this opera is in French. He wrote it for performance in Paris at a time when he was living there. Definitely French because the good guys are the French Army.

This one is a comedy. A baby girl named Marie is raised by a regiment of the French Army. She considers all 40 of them to be her papas. She’s now grown (and doing the laundry and cooking for her 40 papas). She vowed to eventually marry one of them. When the regiment is near Tyrol she falls in love with local Tonio. And Tyrol is an enemy of France.

Donizetti wrote in the Bel Canto (beautiful voice) style of the early 19th Century. In this case it means writing in a florid style with lots of high notes (vocal fireworks) – the tenor’s famous aria features nine high Cs. This is where he asks the regiment of Marie’s papas to be allowed to marry her. The Metropolitan Opera has a rule against encores. I’ve heard this is the only aria in which the audience response allows one. And there was one in this performance. (There is a chorus in Verdi’s Nabucco that also sometimes gets an encore.)

In the second act the Duchess of Krakenthorp appears. It is a brief, non singing role. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a big fan of opera, has appeared in this role (and the script was revised for her).

Because I was enjoying the opera so much I didn’t get any other writing done.