Donizetti - La Fille du Régiment - Dessay, Florez - CampanellaPerformer: Felicity Palmer (Soprano), Juan Diego Flórez (Tenor), Donald Maxwell (Baritone),
Natalie Dessay (Soprano), Alessandro Corbelli (Baritone), Dawn French ()
Conductor: Bruno Campanella
Orchestra/Ensemble: Royal Opera House Covent Garden Orchestra
Date of Recording: 2007
Venue: Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
January 2007 brought an ‘operatic coupling made in heaven’ (Financial Times) to London’s Royal Opera House when Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez took on the roles of Marie and Tonio in Donizetti’s comic opera La Fille du régiment.
‘The Royal Opera’s new staging... will probably go down in history as one of the company’s great achievements,’ said The Guardian. ‘Laurent Pelly’s production casts Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez as Marie and Tonio. Neither, one suspects, could ever be bettered. Dessay, in particular, gives the performance of a lifetime. A remarkable theatrical animal, she acts as well as she sings... Vocally, [Flórez] is immaculate, with the nine top Cs of his big aria perfectly placed.’ (Famously, the following month, Flórez’s prowess brought a break with a venerable tradition: he was obliged to encore the showpiece at La Scala, Milan. No singer had been permitted to repeat an aria at the leading Italian house since 1933!)
La Fille du régiment has a distinguished history at Covent Garden. The 1960s brought virtuosos in a very different mould in the principal roles, Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti. In 2007 there were standing ovations for Dessay and Flórez. As The Times said: ‘I have never seen a singer invest quite so much manic comic energy into a role as Dessay does, and certainly not while tossing out some of the most fiendish coloratura in the repertoire... Simply mesmerising.’ --Arkivmusic
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