La Fille du Régiment – review

There are two irresistible reasons to overlook the occasionally tired feel of this latest Covent Garden outing for Laurent Pelly's justly celebrated 2007 production of Donizetti's light French comedy. The first is the return of the show's original Tonio, Juan Diego Flórez. In some of his recent visits the impeccably tasteful Peruvian tenor has sounded a tad harder of tone than he was a decade ago, when everything felt so dazzlingly effortless. Today, the vocal craft is a little more obvious, but the artistic results are in some ways more deeply impressive. Flórez can still throw off the famously taxing sequence of nine high Cs in the first act with complete security, but the intensity of his last-act aria was the finest singing of the night.

The second, more purely sentimental reason, is the return to Covent Garden after 17 years of Kiri Te Kanawa in the normally non-singing role of the Duchess of Crackentorp, previously taken by Dawn French and Ann Widdecombe. To mark the event, the production is tweaked so that Te Kanawa can sing the arietta O Fior del Diorno from Puccini's Edgar, written half a century after Donizetti's opera. Bel canto purists will doubtless disapprove, but most people won't give a damn. Te Kanawa is operatic royalty and, especially for those who heard her in her prime, it's a joy to welcome her back. Thursday's performance, which falls on her 70th birthday, promises more indulgences.

All of this overshadowed Patrizia Ciofi's return in the tomboy-to-toff role of Marie, brilliantly created by Natalie Dessay in 2007. Ciofi's performance was hard-working and heroic, since she was recovering from a virus, so allowances are in order, but for all the endearing effort, the vocal performance lacked focus. The Polish contralto Ewa Podleś stood out amid a clutch of strongly cast lesser roles. Yves Abel's conducting was somewhat pedestrian in the early scenes, but perked up in the second half.