La fille du regiment

Published Friday 12 January 2007 at 17:20 by George Hall

It’s been 40 years since Covent Garden presented Donizetti’s light-hearted military comedy. Last time round it starred Joan Sutherland in the title role, with Luciano Pavarotti knocking out top C after top C to her side. This time it’s an equivalently starry pairing, with the leading coloratura of the day, French soprano Natalie Dessay, enjoying her tomboy role as Marie, a young woman brought up by an entire regiment of soldiers, and Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez effortlessly graceful and equally virtuosic as her adored Tonio.

The bigger picture is secure in Laurent Pelly’s production, though Chantal Thomas’ sets are not the most inspiring and the comedy arguably too broad, with an excess of mugging. Bruno Campanella’s conducting too has some wayward moments, with some unconvincing changes of pace and insufficient precision. But as a whole the evening has enough feelgood factor about it to win through.

Adding to its quality are Felicity Palmer’s strong-minded but neurotic Marquise de Berkenfield, ably abetted by Donald Maxwell’s daffy Hortensius and Alessandro Corbelli’s sympathetic Sergeant Sulpice. Dawn French makes her operatic debut in the non-singing role of the hyper-snobbish Duchess of Crackentorp, and fully justifies the beefing-up of the part with a finely tuned performance that ups the comic ante.

But overall it’s the outstanding singing of the two stars, who supply moments of languid pathos amid their flamboyant vocalism, which makes this a memorable evening.