Donizetti high notes

Donizetti premiered La Fille du Régiment in 1840, the year after Lucia di Lammermoor, and he ruled opera in Paris. Berlioz remarked, "M Donizetti seems to treat us like a conquered country; it is a veritable invasion. One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris, but only of the opera houses of M Donizetti". And despite uneven reception everywhere it premiered, this joyful, silly, lovely opera has remained a success.

The story?

Briefly, as a foundling, Marie was adopted by a regiment of Napoleon's army. She falls for Tonio, a Tyrolean peasant who joins the (enemy!) regiment to gain permission to marry her. Meanwhile the wealthy countess claims Marie as her niece (actually, she's her daughter) and is about to marry her off to a wealthy duke when... You can see why W.S.Gilbert loved Donizetti's work.

For full synopsis, and some great clips, as well as a video of the director's explanations of his setting (below) and costuming of this silly story, explore the ROH site here.

Bel Canto high notes

It's famous for the tenor's high C's especially for Tonio's wildly celebratory song to his new army friends, "Ah mes amis!" (Donizetti wrote 8 high C's, and ambitious tenors put in a ninth. In our production, Juan Diego Flórez also scored an almost unprecedented Met encore - totaling 18 of those impossible notes.)

But in recent performances the featured star has been the soprano playing Marie, the regiment's "daughter", whose role offers a range of bel canto from love songs to military marches. Joan Sutherland did it in London. (The tenor didn't even get to sing "Ah mes amis!"when she recorded the opera as part of Who's afraid of Opera - it's here.)

Our production

At the Met in 2007-8, this production was triumphant. Directed by Laurent Pelly, it was a coproduction of the Royal Opera House, which showed it first, then The Metropolitan Opera and the Wiener Staatsoper).

Marie is the tiny (5'2") French soprano Natalie Dessay, at her most hilarious comedienne, relishing the role as the regimental girl Friday. "Her acting is brilliant and extremely physical; so much so that one almost misses that she is also turning in a brilliant vocal performance with clear as a bell coloratura and beautiful phrasing.  All this while she irons huge piles of laundry, hauls tubs of potatoes or is born aloft by the chorus! " More here.

Here's her regimental song, "Chacun le sait".

Tonio, with his high C's, is sung by Peruvian Juan Diego Flórez.

Here is That Song, in which he celebrates his simultaneous achievement of becoming a soldier and potentially getting married.

And completing the current stars of bel canto operas is the redoubtable Alessandro Corbelli as the Sergeant.

Star tracking

Are you interest in tracking the stories of our stars? Dessay and Flórez topped bel canto star roles for years, but both moved from those over the two decades since this performance.

"Soprano Natalie Dessay was likely one of the greatest opera actors that the world has ever known", wrote David Salazaar. He added, "Perhaps her most iconic role is that of Marie in “La Fille du Régiment,” which seemed tailor-made to her talents. In this French work, Dessay not only was able to reveal her genuine comic timing, but actually indulge and engage with it. And given her French nationality, her “Salut a la France” is among the most genuine such interpretations of the aria."

Dessay had already had two vocal surgeries when she sang this role, and extraordinarily filmed the experience in a series of videos. She retired from opera in 2013. Full story here.

With the kids supported by Sinfonia por el Perú.

A different story for Flórez, detailed here. "None currently shines more brightly than the Peruvian Juan Diego Flórez, who seems to have been born to conquer such roles and, additionally, has learnt to sing them with surpassing grace, delicacy and imagination. ..Plácido Domingo has gone on record as saying that he believes that "no one in history has ever sung these roles as well as Flórez."

Here is that endorsement - and Pavarotti's too.

The ROH recorded a fascinating interview with Flórez in 2015, when he sang Orpheus there. Listen here. His light tenor voice changed, of course, as they do, and with it his roles. In 2025 when he sang in Australia, ABC filed this account of his life. While YouTube is replete with his bel canto performances, his transition to darker voiced roles is less documented. But you can view his concerts for the Sinfonia por el Peru, the charity he formed to support underprivileged kids into singing.

Lyn, 14/10/26