La fille du régiment, Royal Opera House, review: Miranda Richardson gives a thunderous performance

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Laurent Pelly’s production of Donizetti’s La fille du régiment was bewitching when it premiered nine years ago. The plot turns on “orphan” Marie having been adopted by a regiment of the French army, for whom she gratefully acts as cook and laundress; outraged when she falls in love with a German, the soldiers melt when they realise that he has saved her life; it then turns out that she is of noble birth…

The work was designed as a divertissement for mid-19th century Paris, and as such it’s a winner, with a lot of rum-ti-tum, a blizzard of high Cs for the lover Tonio, and some gorgeous arias for Marie to win all hearts with.

With brilliant help from his set designer Chantal Thomas and his choreographer Laura Scozzi, Pelly cut the cloying sentimentality of the plot with astringent wit, but in the course of a series of revivals his bracingly hard-edged approach has become blurred and softened.

Something similar has happened with the casting. Miranda Richardson takes the non-singing role of the Duchesse de Crackentorp with appropriately thunderous force, but Enkelejda Shkoza’s incarnation of the Marquise de Berkenfield doesn’t get the laughs it needs to.

The original pairing of Juan Diego Florez and Natalie Dessay in the principal roles has repeatedly been shown to be unimprovable, and in Javier Camarena we get a Tonio who effortlessly hits the high Cs, but without a shred of charm. Sabine Devieilhe’s Marie is short on the comedy, but in the big arias her singing has a grace and purity which goes straight to the heart.

Until July 20