DONIZETTI : LA FILLE DU RÉGIMENT

THE DAUGHTER OF THE REGIMENT
LA FiGLIA DEL REGGIMENTO

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 29th of January 2012 at 3 - 6 pm
Sunday 7th of March 2010 at 3 - 6 pm
Sunday 25th of May 2008 at 3 pm
Sunday 12th of August 2007 at 3 pm

INTRODUCTION
LIBRETTO (French)
LIBRETTO (French)
LIBRETTO (Italian) 
FULL SCORE (French)
These links offer you two summaries of the story (Wiki and Opera Guide) and the opportunity of downloading a copy of the musical score (Wiki) enabling you to check whether the tenor is really required to sing 9 top Cs in his first aria (count 'em).

                FATHERS AND DAUGHTER (A regimented daughter)
 LA FILLE DU RÉGIMENT (The Regiment’s Daughter)
 Gaetano Donizetti (1840)
Personages:
Marie (La vivandière, canteen woman of her Napoleonic French regiment) Natalie Dessay
Tonio (Tyrolean or Swiss recruit for that regiment) Juan Diego Florez
Sergeant Sulpice (in that same regiment) Alessandro Corbelli
Marquise de Birkenfeld (Marie’s Aunt, or something else?) Felicity Palmer
Duchesse de Krakenthorp (Mother of the Duke who is to marry Marie) Dawn French
Hortensius (butler, or steward, of the Marquise/Marchioness) 2
Royal Opera House Covent Garden (in London, of course) Bruno Campanella (Wee bell)
Act 1  Swiss Tyrol during the Napoleonic Wars
The people of a Tyrolean village are in a state of terror as they hear French soldiers approaching, or advancing. Three women are praying to the Virgin Mary.
   The Marchioness of Birkenfeld is hysterical and fainting; her steward Hortensius is treating her with smelling salts.
   A peasant reports that the French are falling back from the mountain. General relief.
But the lady is afraid of being manhandled. She orders Hortensius to go and guard the gold and jewellery in her carriage.
    Sergeant Sulpice appears, and everyone flees; but he has come to announce peace.
    Marie arrives, and we learn that she is the daughter of the regiment; a foundling snatched from a battlefield, she has been brought up by Sulpice and the army; she is as pretty as an angel, and as courageous as any soldier; and they made her their canteen girl (vivandière). They sing martial songs. (Natalie Dessay vigorously irons the men’s shirts.)
   Rumour has it that she has been seen talking to a young Tyrolean. Yes, he saved her life (somehow sometime). At this point some soldiers bring Tonio as their prisoner: he is a traitor, come to spy on them. Of course, he has simply come to see Marie,
   He shall perish! What, death to the man who saved my life? He rescued me from falling over a precipice.
   In that case, he is our friend! Marie sings the regimental roundelay. Then it is time for roll call, and they march off with Tonio in tow.
    He soon reappears to speak with his beloved. He now learns that the whole regiment is her father. Here ensues a sort of tender love duet.
    Sulpice surprises them, locked in a loving embrace, but they drift off, oblivious.
    The Marquise and Hortensius confront Sergeant Sulpice. She addresses him as Captain. She wants the way cleared so that she can return to her Birkenfeld chateau. It then emerges that a Captain Robert had fathered a child with her sister. This turns out to be Marie. She must leave the army and return to her real title and rank, and become a proper lady.
     Tonio has joined up, so that he can claim Marie in marriage. He sings of his joy: Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête! His exhilaration is expressed in a succession of top C’s.
     However, Marie has to leave with her Aunt,  Sad farewells all round, but Tonio is in despair and even enraged.
Act 2  In the chateau of the Marquise de Berkenfield
Marie has been installed in high society for several months, and she is now talking more like a lady than a soldier. A marriage has been arranged for her, with her cousin, son of the Duchess of Krakenthorp. She shows reluctance, but has accepted the proposal.  Sergeant Sulpice is called in to reinforce (a nice military term) her decision, and encourage her (inspire courage in her) to sign the contract.
   The young lady herself now enters, to give a singing recital to her Sergeant. The song is by Fettuggini (not his real name, and not even a real composer): Venus descends in the opaque night to see the god who inspires love.  (Adonis, I presume?)
   Marie warms up with the traditional Mimimimimi. As she sings, Sulpice makes interjections, and begins to encourage her to sing the regiment’s anthem: Rataplan rataplan. Eventually the art-song is lost in the marching song. Ah, quelle horreur! Oh, how awful! the Marchioness exclaims, but she finds herself joining in the martial music.
   Left alone, Marie bewails her situation, but she hears the sound of a miltary march, and she is soon surrounded by her fathers, and especially her beloved Tonio, who is now an officer, promoted for his bravey.
   When the Marquise comes in, Tonio asks permission to marry Marie. She orders  him to go. She then tells Sulpice her life story.  At thirty she was still unwed, but a Captain Robert stole her heart, and she gave birth to a daughter, but she abandined her to avoid disgrace in society.
    The Duchess arrives with the young duke and a notary. Marie has been talking to Sulpice, and she rushes in to embrace her mother the Marchioness. The Duchess is scandalized by this, and even more so when Tonio and his men storm in, and they reveal that Marie was their vivandière.  Marie is still thinking she must sign the contract , but her mother intervenes  and gives her to Tonio, the husband her heart had chosen.
    The Duchess departs. Scandalous!
    Hurrah for France, and the victory that the lovers have won.

2012
DONIZETTI: The Daughter of the Regiment, an opera in two acts
Marie..................................... Nino Machaidze
Tonio...................................... Lawrence Brownlee
Sergeant Sulpice..................... Maurizio Muraro
Marquise of Berkenfeld........... Ann Murray
Hortensius.............................. James Courtney
Duchess of Krakenthorp......... Kiri Te Kanawa
Corporal................................. Roger Andrews
Townsman.............................. Mark Persing
Notary.................................... Jack Wetherall
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Yves Abel (EBU)
2010
DONIZETTI: The Daughter of the Regiment, an opera in two acts
Marie..................................... Diana Damrau
Tonio...................................... Juan Diego Flórez
Marquise de Berkenfeld.......... Meredith Arwady
Sulpice Pingot......................... Maurizio Muraro
Hortensius.............................. Donald Maxwell
Corporal................................. Roger Andrews
Duchesse de Krakenthorp....... Kiri Te Kanawa
Townsman.............................. Jeffrey Mosher
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Marco Armiliato
Marie returns, but this time it is not Joan or Natalie but Diana Damrau (German).
Notice our Kiri in a non-singing (?) role.
We have seen the 2008 version at the cinema.
2008
DONIZETTI: La fille du Régiment, an opera in two acts
After being brought up in a regiment Marie discovers she is in fact the daughter of nobility. Consequently she has to learn correct social etiquette and part from her love Tonio.
Marie................................. Natalie Dessay
Marquise of Berkenfield..... Felicity Palmer
Tonio................................. Juan Diego Flórez
Sulpice............................... Alessandro Corbelli
Duchess of Krakenthorp.... Marian Seldes
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Marco Armiliato
In this opera the tenor hits 9 top Cs in his aria ("Mes amis"), and Luciano Pavarotti was famous for this; but Juan Diego Florez confesses to slipping in (elsewhere) a D-flat (alias C#).
2007
DONIZETTI : La Fille du régiment, an opera in two acts
Marie..................................... Natalie Dessay
Tonio...................................... Juan Diego Flórez
Sulpice................................... Carlos Alvarez
Duchesse de Crackentorp....... Montserrat Caballé
Marquise de Berkenfeld.......... Janina Baechle
Hortensius.............................. Clemens Unterreiner
Corporal................................. Marcus Pelz
Notary.................................... Carlo Chies
Valet...................................... Wolfram Igor Derntl
Vienna State Opera Chorus & Orch/Yves Abel
(recorded on 1st April by Austrian Radio)

The New York Metropera will be staging this one in their next season, but (such slackness!) they have not put the guide-notes on their site yet. However, they do tell us that the leading soprano and tenor will be the same as in this Vienna performance, though they will not have Montserrat!

Denis Forman has omitted it from The Good Opera Guide, by his usual criterion that it must have three recordings in the catalogue. I would think that Sullivan's Mikado should have been included on this basis. This Donizetti comic-opera has only one version in my old Penguin Guide, and it is the one I own in a big box, which has Joan Sutherland on the front, and on the back is young Luciano Pavarotti (who is in hospital, at present, with pneumonia, but last year it was pancreas cancer; he and I have the same age right now, but he was born in the year preceding mine). The book that goes with the two black disks has numerous pictures of Jenny Lind as Marie, and one of Lily Pons, and an article by our own Jeremy Commons (who actually quotes from The Mikado, specifically Pooh-Bah's "this is merely corroborative detail").

Richard Bonynge is the conductor of the Royal Opera House forces (it is a military story, after all). He has supplied a footnote, in response to Jeremy's assertion that the original French version is superior to the Italian, which has recitative instead of dialogue; Richard admits that he has sneaked some accompanied recitative into it, but he was trying to stay within the opéra-comique tradition and use dialogue; he adds that this is the forerunner of Offenbach's operettas (and thus perhaps Gilbert and Sullivan, too?).

This is the opera in which Pavarotti proved he was the king of the high C's; there is a succession of top C's towards the end of Act 1.

It is a tale of a foundling discovered on a battlefield (!) by the 21st Regiment, who finds her true love and also her mother.  It is like a Dickens novel (Oliver Twist, for example), but there could not be plagiarism on either side.

(August 2007) My dear wife Helen is home from hospital for the weekend, pretty happy, and pretty, and fairly comfortable.