Gaetano Donizetti: La Fille du Regiment - Opera Australia

I think the Beverly Sills is the best but the dvd has too much noise on it. I saw Sills doing this opera at Wolf Trapp and she ruled the stage. Joan Sutherland may have been past her prime when she did this but she displays more talent for humor than I would have expected. Of the dvds of this opera this is the best. At least they didn't move this to WWI like another production.

Why do so many reviews begin or end with the tiresome caveat: "Though she was no longer in her prime. . . ? " The fact is most of the greatest XX century voices were never filmed in their signature roles. However, Sutherland can be found both with Opera Canada and Opera Australia in definitive performances of roles she reprised locally once she had left the international stage. There are nine with Opera Australia. I am on my way to acquire them all. This particular performance dates back to 1986. Dame Joan, in "decadence", belts out the kind of superb coloratura many younger sopranos wish they could achieve at any time of their careers. Anson Austin makes an appropriately handsome Tonio, and here we come to another cliche: "No Pavarotti"--though he did hit the requisite number of high C's. Begg, Wilcox and Marie-Claire are perfectly suited to their roles. I was quite surprised to see Dame Joan enjoying the slapstick comedy as an accomplished comedienne. I also noticed Donizetti himself was in on the fun, for the "Singing lesson" episode is a model of self-parody: Donizetti is using Bel Canto to make fun of Bel Canto!

The image quality is so bad as to render the DVD virtually unwatchable. The picture has multiple diagonal lines that are probably from the tape used to master the DVD. This artifact makes the images blurry. I suggest avoiding the DVD and getting a CD of Miss Sutherland's performance instead. I cannot comment on the performance as I could not watch beyond the first five or 10 minutes.

Although an old recording (1986), this is an excellent example of Joan Sutherland in a role for which she was famous. Her voice, and her control of it, is still impressive - although it lacks some of the brilliant clarity it had at its peak. Any Sutherland aficionado will appreciate this performance.

great gift

Beautifully sung and staged. What more could I say?

This live performance of La fille du régiment was made roughly 15 years after Sutherland's celebrated commercial recording of the opera with Pavarotti. She was just short of 60 years old at the time of this performance and was at the time enjoying a sort of renaissance of renewed strength and vigor in her voice. I saw her in four performances of Anna Bolena in Houston just two months prior to this Fille, and in a challenging concert in Dallas about six months after, and noted that she sounded magnificent each time I saw her. Here, she is in good representative form for the period.Even though Sutherland was best known for the many heroines, most of them loony, that she portrayed in the serious operas of the bel canto era, her true métier was comedy. Her sense of timing was flawless. At Marie's entrance Sutherland appears to do several drum rolls and then one time the offstage drummer does a roll that she "accidentally" fails to follow, with a delightful reaction on her part; she returns to this joke once more during her entrance aria that follows. The second act includes a long comic tour de force as Sutherland, playing a canteen girl brought against her will into high society, is forced to rehearse a rather long-winded and stuffy song her "aunt" (actually her mother trying to cover up Marie's illegitimate birth) wants her to perform. For me the highlight of her visual performance involves one of the oldest gags in the book, a scene where she follows her aunt around mimicking her gestures; each time the poor aunt turns around Marie adopts a pose facing the audience that belies the fact that she has been making fun of her. She is so natural and so delightful in this scene that she had me rolling on the floor with laughter.But what about vocally? you ask. How does she measure up? Well, I'll start with the bad stuff, what little of it there is: Sutherland simplifies the music only very slightly from her celebrated recording from 15 years earlier (a high note omitted here, a long note cut short there), and her imitation of a bugle call near the beginning of the opera contains a few (and I mean few) notes that are a bit flat, a flaw she corrects by the end of that call. Other than that, she is in very good voice, with even the famous Sutherland trill still very much in place. Perhaps I might be expected to say at this point that "she is in very good voice for an almost-60-year-old woman," and as it turns out no apologies are necessary. Sopranos half her age might well have cause to be envious. We were very fortunate to have Sutherland for as long as we did; when will her like come along again? And while it is true that most of the men in the chorus who played her many loving regimental "fathers" do appear to be half Sutherland's age or younger, this was probably less evident in actual performance than on television. Still the television director, not wanting to push his luck, uses few true close-ups. Bottom line is that the audience truly loves her, and who can blame them?The rest of the cast does not let the side down either. Veteran Heather Begg, looking and sounding older than she probably actually was (check her out in the Adriana Lecouvreur video made two years later to get a better idea of her actual age), is appropriately snooty and stuffy. She also shows herself to be a good comic actress as well, particularly in the aforementioned rehearsal scene. Anson Austin, Sutherland's partner in a number of these Australian videos, sings well enough. He does sound a bit raw in a few of the nine high C's in his big aria, although he recovers in time to do a good and long-held final one. Gregory Yurisich as Sergeant Sulpice is nowhere near as crusty as I might expect an old sergeant to be; still he was fun to watch and very much into the piece. Richard Bonynge's conducting is buoyant and very supportive of the singers.Production values could have been a bit better. All we get is the opera with no special features. Picture and sound are good, although it would have been nice to at least be able to turn the subtitles on and off, something that is possibly not Kultur's fault. Anyway, the lack of special features is the only reason I gave the DVD four stars instead of five.This is easily the best of the Sutherland videos that I have seen, even if I still regret that nobody took the time to videotape her Semiramide or Esclarmonde. Highly recommended for those who want to spend a couple of hours enjoying one of the more fun comic operas, and even more highly recommended for Sutherland fans.

The ranking is in terms of comparison with the Sills Wolftrap and the Florez-Dessay versions. Some will like the sound of one or another of the female leads with Florez clearly superior to his two male competitors. My own judgment is based on the productions as a whole rather than the particular voices that portray individual parts. In that regard, I found the Australian Opera version (Sutherland)less successful as musical comedy than either of the others. It simply does not have have the energy and playfulness that radiate from the other two nor are scenic design and costumes as eye catching (to me). Nevertheless, it is quite satisfactory and will provide an entertaining evening.A note, after watching again, in 2015, having seen both aforementioned other versions during this same week. Now I would place the Florez-Dessay version as that with the singer most fitting in age and performance to the demands of the role. Florez in looks and singing is still the one I would give the edge to among the tenors. The Dessay version seems to me also to have been a better over-all production.On the other hand, I can't downgrade anything which gives us a chance to see and hear Sills or Sutherland belting out those "songs" and seeming to have such a good time doing it. That they are no longer in their glorious youth will not be apparent to most of us amateur viewers who take our entertainment in opera as we take our entertainment in Broadway or London Theater Shows: different approaches to the same objective...entrepreneurs seeking to entertain us and we seeking to be entertained....anything more than that is a product of greater profundity on the part of the creators and the viewers.

I haven't seen any other DVD s of this opera, but it is hard to credit the possibility of this being surpassed ~ it has to be the definitive version, surely. As I write I am jusr backtracking to Tonio's aria towards the end of Act I ... SPLENDID (My Soul now has a future ...).. Anson AustinI was fortunate in finding a Region 0 version which subsequently seems to have gone off the lists.Not quite certain of the DVD genre, having grown up looking for a good vinyl recording and later CD s .... this is one where you can feel you are in a good theatre seat and not given a close up of the tonsils of the singers. I am reasonably impressed with the sound, and the filming of a live performance has a spontaneity advantage over the recording studio. And if you don't like what tyhe cameraman is focussing on one can always close ones eyes.

Que vous aimiez ou nous la Stupenda, n'hésitez pas. Ici encore plus de les vocalises du salut à la France, c'est l'autocritique qui prime. Sutherland fait une caricature d'elle même qui vous laissera baba! N'oubliez pas vos mouchoirs pour essuyer vos larmes de rire!Hormis H. Begg qui assure une réplique toute aussi amusante et caricaturale, le reste de la distribution est banal.