La Fille du Régiment, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, review

Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment may be only an operatic tomtiddler, of no great artistic pretension, but it can be an absolute winner when the two leads radiate the comic flair and vocal virtuosity of Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez – the pair who made Laurent Pelly’s production such an instant smash hit when it was unveiled at Covent Garden in 2007.

For this revival, nimbly conducted by Yves Abel, the star wattage glowed less brightly and the original magic never sparked. Stepping into Natalie Dessay’s shoes all too literally, Patrizia Ciofi’s incarnation of the vivandière Marie often seemed like a carbon copy of her predecessor’s. The gags, gestures and grimaces all seemed imitated rather than felt, and although she has the same petite, gawky frame as Dessay, without the latter’s zanily wistful charm, Marie emerged as an irritating hoyden rather than an appealing waif.

Vocally, she was more distinctive. Singing through a grainy timbre in somewhat occluded French, she shaped the lovely “Il faut partir” and “Par le rang” gracefully and had fun with the rataplans and acrobatics. But she never quite made the part her own.

Colin Lee’s Tonio was more successful: his warm, flexible, sturdy tenor is expressed in beguilingly sweet tone, and he bounced happily up to those circus-trick top Cs in “Ah! Mes amis”. Even if he doesn’t have Florez’s stage glamour and slightly overdid the bumpkin element in his characterisation, he was never less than endearing.

My dream – or nightmare – Marquise de Berkenfeld is a grande dame contralto with what Rossini called “une voix obscène”: Ann Murray can’t compete here, but opted cannily to play her as Auntie Mame. Alan Opie’s Sulpice was hampered by an over-padded costume, Donald Maxwell made a wry Hortensius. There’s too much spoken dialogue, but it was salutary to hear it projected without mikes.

Finally, the matter of Ann Widdecombe, in the cameo spoken role of the Duchesse de Crackentorp. Why this former champion of decent causes and ordinary people should want to devote her energies to making an exhibition of herself in showbiz I cannot imagine: she has no natural aptitude for the stage. Her Duchesse – a gruffly sarcastic old battleaxe – gets a round of applause and a couple of laughs with some rather feeble and presumably self-scripted jokes about Cornish pasties and the Olympics. But I found her posturing mortifyingly inept.

Until 10 May

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