One Swallow doesn’t make a Summer
Giacomo Puccini: La Rondine, 10 January 2009.
Regular readers will be aware of my difficulties in appreciating the delicate sensibilities and subtleties of Puccini’s operas. While occasionally overwhelmed by the theatricality of the drama, I am often left unmoved by the emotional content as expressed through the music which I find too episodic and fragmentary to convey true feeling. This reminder is stimulated by the reaction to my suggestion in the review of Thaïs that Massenet, of the two, had the better mastery of composition and by the anticipation that La Rondine might be an exception to ‘prove’ the rule.
Regular readers will be aware of my difficulties in appreciating the delicate sensibilities and subtleties of Puccini’s operas. While occasionally overwhelmed by the theatricality of the drama, I am often left unmoved by the emotional content as expressed through the music which I find too episodic and fragmentary to convey true feeling. This reminder is stimulated by the reaction to my suggestion in the review of Thaïs that Massenet, of the two, had the better mastery of composition and by the anticipation that La Rondine might be an exception to ‘prove’ the rule.
La Rondine (Italian, not French, despite its setting in Paris and Nice) – The Swallow - is styled as commedia lirica. It was composed during the First World War and received its first performance in the neutral Monte Carlo in 1917. Having been commissioned in Vienna in 1913 as ‘a light sentimental opera in the Viennese style’, it went through several versions, finally with a libretto by Giuseppe Adami.
The resulting highly delightful flow of melody is a mixture of Viennese operetta, French operette, dance music of its time – tango, one-step, foxtrot (in spite of the original setting in Second Empire Paris) - as well as Puccini’s more familiar style. Thus it comes over very much as pastiche – but none the worse for that, provided one is not expecting more. There is much stage business of a light comedy genre.
The subject is a sugar-coated La Traviata. Magda, mistress of the banker Rambaldo, is inspired by the poet Prunier to take an evening off to try to recapture her lost innocence by revisiting, in disguise, the Café Bullier. Here she encounters Ruggero on his first visit to Paris, directed to Bullier’s by her maid Lisette, also there, accompanied by Prunier.
Magda and Ruggero fall in love. Act 3 finds them living together in Nice. Ruggero receives a letter from his mother welcoming Magda into the family but she, unwilling to reveal her past and unable to face up to a life of domesticity, decides to return to Rambaldo in an extended bitter-sweet concluding duet.
The production is the inspiration of Nicolas Joël, director of Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse where it was first mounted in a co-production with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden where it has also been staged. Joël brings the action forward to the 1920’s, which gives the set designer Ezio Frigerio the opportunity to indulge in the most fantastical art nouveau designs, recalling the Mucha of the Municipal House in Prague. The stylish conductor was Marco Armiliato.
This setting formed the background for fine performances from the cast led by husband and wife Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorgiu as Ruggero and Magda, the latter almost successfully hiding her heavy cold. Notable was Lisette Oropesa playing Lisette who caught the spirit of the opera to perfection. With Marius Brenciu as the manipulative Prunier, she made the most of the subsidiary plot which has been criticised as a weakness of the opera. Samuel Ramey played the impassive and cynical Rambaldo. The performance matched the décor and the spirit of the work.
But how is it in the cinema? The audience is there to experience an opera, not a movie, to feel themselves part of the theatre audience, albeit with the freedom of the camera’s ability to roam. Therefore the conventions of opera should be observed. The performers are singers, not movie stars. Any tendency to be over-conscious of the camera (as was hinted at in the interviews) should be nipped in the bud, as must the use of cinematic tricks.
So far the Met has avoided these traps, except in the case of Tristan und Isolde. The sound quality must be perfect, as it has been in the past. On the last two occasions there have been problems with what sounded to be misplaced microphones and with loss of synchronisation. If this is not put right audiences will be lost.
As usual the interviews during the intermission formed an integral part of the entertainment, this time conducted by Renée Fleming. I was amused to note that one capable of memorising complete operas requires a large-print prompt card to pose a few obvious questions to the principals (as did Domingo at Thaïs). The results were revealing. The body-language of Alagna and Gheorghiu both on- and off-stage almost formed a sub-plot of the opera. Did she give him her cold?
Yes, I enjoyed it but was left wondering whether there are not operas more deserving of revival by the resources of the Met than La Rondine.
The resulting highly delightful flow of melody is a mixture of Viennese operetta, French operette, dance music of its time – tango, one-step, foxtrot (in spite of the original setting in Second Empire Paris) - as well as Puccini’s more familiar style. Thus it comes over very much as pastiche – but none the worse for that, provided one is not expecting more. There is much stage business of a light comedy genre.
The subject is a sugar-coated La Traviata. Magda, mistress of the banker Rambaldo, is inspired by the poet Prunier to take an evening off to try to recapture her lost innocence by revisiting, in disguise, the Café Bullier. Here she encounters Ruggero on his first visit to Paris, directed to Bullier’s by her maid Lisette, also there, accompanied by Prunier.
Magda and Ruggero fall in love. Act 3 finds them living together in Nice. Ruggero receives a letter from his mother welcoming Magda into the family but she, unwilling to reveal her past and unable to face up to a life of domesticity, decides to return to Rambaldo in an extended bitter-sweet concluding duet.
The production is the inspiration of Nicolas Joël, director of Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse where it was first mounted in a co-production with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden where it has also been staged. Joël brings the action forward to the 1920’s, which gives the set designer Ezio Frigerio the opportunity to indulge in the most fantastical art nouveau designs, recalling the Mucha of the Municipal House in Prague. The stylish conductor was Marco Armiliato.
This setting formed the background for fine performances from the cast led by husband and wife Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorgiu as Ruggero and Magda, the latter almost successfully hiding her heavy cold. Notable was Lisette Oropesa playing Lisette who caught the spirit of the opera to perfection. With Marius Brenciu as the manipulative Prunier, she made the most of the subsidiary plot which has been criticised as a weakness of the opera. Samuel Ramey played the impassive and cynical Rambaldo. The performance matched the décor and the spirit of the work.
But how is it in the cinema? The audience is there to experience an opera, not a movie, to feel themselves part of the theatre audience, albeit with the freedom of the camera’s ability to roam. Therefore the conventions of opera should be observed. The performers are singers, not movie stars. Any tendency to be over-conscious of the camera (as was hinted at in the interviews) should be nipped in the bud, as must the use of cinematic tricks.
So far the Met has avoided these traps, except in the case of Tristan und Isolde. The sound quality must be perfect, as it has been in the past. On the last two occasions there have been problems with what sounded to be misplaced microphones and with loss of synchronisation. If this is not put right audiences will be lost.
As usual the interviews during the intermission formed an integral part of the entertainment, this time conducted by Renée Fleming. I was amused to note that one capable of memorising complete operas requires a large-print prompt card to pose a few obvious questions to the principals (as did Domingo at Thaïs). The results were revealing. The body-language of Alagna and Gheorghiu both on- and off-stage almost formed a sub-plot of the opera. Did she give him her cold?
Yes, I enjoyed it but was left wondering whether there are not operas more deserving of revival by the resources of the Met than La Rondine.