Not this time!

No bis of 'Ah! Mes amis' from Juan Diego Flórez. More on that later.

If you attended Saturday's Met simulcast of Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment and you didn't have a thoroughly fun time then I really think you should look for some other art form to enjoy because opera absolutely does not get any more fun than that. It's a silly opera and rather like some Shakespeare comedies it can suffer from not actually being very funny. Except yesterday. It was funny. Very, very funny. Natalie Dessay is a natural comedienne in the mold of Lucille Ball. She seems to have a natural flair for physical comedy and for comedic timing - something which cannot be taught. Whether she was ironing the soldiers shirts or marching or being carried aloft she was a downright hoot. As had been reported from Monday's opening night there was definite chemistry between her and JDF which came across most convincingly.

A word to opera impresarios: If you are thinking of mounting a comic opera production at a major opera house in the near future then unless you have to hand Ms Dessay, Mr Flórez, the Laurent Pelly production and everything else the Met had in their quiver at the weekend, don't do La Fille du Regiment. Rossini's The Barber of Seville might be an excellent choice; Mozart's Così fan Tutte is a funny and charming masterpiece. Gilbert and Sullivan anyone? If you do Fille, people may walk out saying to each other "That was excellent!" but are going to then add "But did you see that Met production with Dessay and Flórez? My goodness wasn't that just fabulous?" There's going to be no getting away from it for a while; the gold standard for that opera has been set for the forseeable future I would say. Go ahead. Reject my free advice. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

Felicity Palmer as the Marquise of Birkenfeld - the 'Aunt' - played her part just sufficiently over-the-top to be funny without being a parody. We had seen her just a few weeks ago as a rather different kind of 'Auntie' in Peter Grimes and it is a tribute to her acting capabilities that she seemed totally at home in both parts. When she was interviewed backstage during the intermission I thought she looked and sounded just like Julie Andrews. Alessandro Corbelli made a charming Sulpice and the opera ended leaving one with the feeling that, just perhaps,his relationship with the Marquise was going in the same direction as that of Queen Victoria and Mr John Brown. I am sorry he felt it necessary when he was interviewed to have a dig at Zeffirelli's production of Fille suggesting it was pretty tired and should be put out to pasture.

Marian Seldes had the Duchess of Krakenthorp down to a tee. Of course, Ms Seldes is not without acting experience. She made her breakthrough on Broadway in 1948. That is not a typo, folks. Sixty years ago. Brava, Ms Seldes!

Juan Diego Flórez is not the natural comic that Dessay clearly is but he came across as adequately ardent. He nailed his high C's and, as expected, the audience came pretty-much unglued. Much shouting and clapping and stomping. JDF held his pose as long as possible before finally breaking the fourth wall and bowing to the audience in appreciation. It was a nice gesture and not overdone. The problem was that I believe the audience took that as a sign that he would do a bis and they stopped clapping and settled back in their seats waiting for JDF to do it over. Unfortunately I think Peter Gelb took that as a sign that they wanted to get on with the rest of the opera and there was no signal sent to the conductor's podium. It is possible of course that Mr Gelb had decided that there should be no risk of debasing the coinage and that one bis in a week was quite enough. I suspect we shall hear something about this in the course of the next few days. JDF's aria in Act II was beautiful but not quite in tune. He sang a high D-flat ("It's not written but I put it in") which brought the hairs up on the back of my neck. This guy has a major bel canto voice.

You may have noted that I have made no mention of the quality of the singing. This is because something intruded into Saturday's performance which has left me confused and piqued. The singers had microphones. You may wish to take a pause and thoroughly digest what you just read. In the course of the intermission interviews there was mention by Renee Fleming and others about the difficulties performers have with spoken dialogue in a house the size of the Met. and now I am hearing that in the radio interview Dessay admitted that she was mic'ed for the dialogue portions of the opera. What has upset me is that this was done in an underhand manner and that it leaves one wondering whether there were other parts of the opera when Dessay and/or other singers had the assistance of amplification. One of my blog correspondents, malibran, who is a much better judge of these things than I, wrote today:

"During Act 1 of the fille telecast, there was this odd "straw sticking our of my peck cleavage" action, which I frankly thought it was some odd undergarment, but my mother insisted it was a microphone. This sort of took me out of act one as I kept wondering how it could be a mic, since Dessay was running around the stage and obviously the sound of her outfit against the mic would create distortion. I am now hearing that during the radio transmission, Dessay admitted that she had a mic and that it was used for the dialogue portion of the opera.

I call b***s***. Now I am beginning to realize why her voice has been, until now, a strange thing to me. During the Romeo/Juliette I saw in the house, the voice was frankly impossibly big for its color. Even the whispers came across ALL TOO CLEAR, leading me to believe, that, perhaps, this was an example of a perfectly placed instrument which carries regardless of the sound. Now I question a lot."

Yes. So do I. And we shouldn't have to. So what's the deal, Mr Gelb? Are the performers ever assisted in their singing by the application of a microphone and amplification? I think we are entitled to know. I truly enjoyed the sound made by Natalie Dessay on Saturday but my assesment of it would be significantly effected by the knowledge that it had been helped along. Hmph.