When I was very
young, I had a book called something like The
Operas of Puccini. I can’t remember – half a century later – whether it
just left La Rondine out, or merely
treated it dismissively, but I have, ever since, presumed that the piece was
a bit of a curious and unsuccessful opera-operetta half-breed. As if Meyerbeer
had tried to write opéra-bouffe. But then I got to know the enchanting Song of
Doretta. Can’t be that bad, I thought.
Well, last night,
at the Deutsche Oper, I got to find out for myself. I don’t think it’s either
curious or unsuccessful. Yes, it’s an interbreeding between the operatic and
operettic conventions of the time, but why not? We interbreed horses and roses
on purpose, why not shows? I found the tone of the piece perfectly agreeable and
the music delightful, and including a couple of really swoonful Big Tunes. I
was less delighted by Willner and Reichert’s libretto, which is a mass of
overused clichés, characters, and set-pieces from the German-language musical
stage. Not a patch on the witty contemporary French works of Willemetz and
Barde. If you took the word ‘amore’ out of this text, the show (which is
deliciously non-long) would be 15 minutes shorter.
What really made
the evening enjoyable for me, however, was the way the show was presented. Especially
the direction, the design and that Deutsche Oper speciality, the casting.
The direction was
by Rolando Villazon, and it was a triumph of clean, clear, unfiddly staging.
Any ‘ideas’ or elements that were superimposed on to the text, to give it a
much-needed dash of original flair were absolutely coherent. The masked white
figures of the heroine’s past lovers, silently stage managing the action, were
a grand touch, leading up to a perfect climax when, at the end, she crowned her
latest lover with a similar mask, before heading back to her old life as a courtesan.
Would that Willner and Reichert had had ideas like that! The only touch I
didn’t like was the introduction of the Kit Kat girls and their MC into the
nightclub scene: the atmosphere of the piece shattered. Wrong period, wrong
country, a rather tasteless and incoherent moment in an otherwise finely judged
and attractive-looking staging.
The scenery (Johannes
Lelacker) and costumes (Brigitte Reiffenstuel) more than played their part in
this. The setting was like the direction, uncomplicated, and without
trundlings-on and trundlings-off, and very pleasing to the eye (I wouldn’t mind
finding that beach in Nice! The real one is all pebbles!). The costumes were
just delightful. Though how Magda managed that act 3 cream suit without her
maid …
The other hero of
the night was the casting director. Amongst the film-sized credits in the
programme, his name doesn’t appear. So I asked. Christoph Seuferle, you have
done it again. An exquisitely cast show. And I didn’t even see the first cast!
Aurelia Florian
played Magda, the courtesan who thinks she longs for Amore, until she finds out
it comes in a cottage. She looked grand in her rich clothes (a little less so
in her poor girl disguise), she acted with convincing style, and she sang like
a cross between Mimi and Rosalinde, which must be right for the role. Her
delicious delivery of the ‘Doretta’ song set the show rolling at full speed,
and when she pulled the stops out in the big ensemble and moments, she soared.
Her naïve lover
was played by Joseph Calleja. He’s a tall, strapping, fine-looking man (which
helped him not to appear the fool the part is written as) and, when he sang,
his beautiful, masculine tenor voice just zinged effortlessly round the
auditorium. At some time, during the evening, everyone else had problems with
being heard over the enthusiastic orchestra. Not he. His pianissimi reached Row
14 like a jet plane. More, please.
The ‘operetta’
element is represented by the other two main characters, Magda’s maid, Lisette,
and her poet, Prunier. It’s pure, old-fashioned Luise Kartousch and Ernst
Tautenhayn, right down to the sexual ambiguity. Except, sadly, they didn’t
dance. I would have liked that. Lisette, who is written as far-too-Adèle (Fledermaus) to be true, was played to
the hilt by Alexandra Hutton, who managed to make it as un-Adèle as possible.
This is the lady I described as the DO’s quadruple threat, when I first saw her
as the three women in Hoffmann. A
magic combination of acting, singing, dancing and star qualities. They were
(except the dancing) all on show tonight: and if her fun kept the evening
bubbling, I was also excited to hear my favourite Papagena soaring up
lyrically, with Magda, in the big quartet, to the lyric rather than the
coloratura heights.
Her partner was
Alvaro Zambrano, who probably won’t be pleased if I say he was simply born to
play the ‘petit comique’ in pieces like this. I’m sure he can do other things
too, but he had the style so right, and he made a totally joyous pairing with
Ms Hutton.
Nobody else in the
piece has much to do, but there was a wholly appealing rich Rambaldo from
Stephen Bronk (Magda left him for a …
penniless tenor?), and Magda’s trio of cocottish friends were played by no less
than three of the house’s baby prima donnas (Siobhan Stagg, Elbenita Kajtazi,
Stephanie Lauricella). Yes… Pamina, Sophie or Rosina one day: a cocotte the
next. Bravo, ladies.
Everyone concerned
last night deserves praise. Silke Sense’s choreography (I assume she
‘choreographed’ the mass scenes in the club, with their mature students and
frenetic dancers, crushing the lovers apart), Roberto Rizzi Brignoli’s
bouncing, lilting orchestra, when they weren’t too enthusiastic. All right,
loud. I reserve my bad notes solely for Messrs Willner and Reichert. What a
pity Puccini didn’t go to Willemetz or Barde. But then La Rondine wouldn’t have turned out as it has.
Which is? Somewhere
between unhappy-ending Lehár and the Kálmán Der
kleine König which I saw last year in America and … Puccini. Fair enough.
