Girl meets boy. Instant attraction. Problems include disapproval from family, unforeseen complications, unhappiness of lovers. It’s a classic theater format that hasn’t changed in centuries, and the frothy romp that is Donizetti’s opera The Daughter of the Regiment is no exception.
Daughter is evidence that enjoyment of absurd humor hasn’t changed in 173 years. Seattle Opera’s production has been moved forward a century from the original, but it works just as well in wartime Europe.
At McCaw Hall, the young lovers, Tonio and Marie, are almost like Seattle Opera’s children. Tenor Lawrence Brownlee and soprano Sarah Coburn are both products of Seattle Opera Young Artists program, as is alternate cast tenor Andrew Stenson. While Brownlee was here at the program’s start, the other two are recent graduates. Brownlee is now in international demand, and judging by their recent performances, both Coburn and Stenson are heading that way also.
Making it even more familial, tenor Peter Kazaras, who has been artistic director of the Young Artists program and overseeing their development, is one of the senior generation of performers in this production.
Frothy it may be, but Daughter’s bel canto demands on the singers are considerable. Brownlee and Stenson had no problem with the vocal acrobatics, including the famous nine high Cs in their first aria, nor the emotion needed in their second. Coburn is singing all seven performances, on stage and singing continually, also with very high notes and runs all over the range. Her voice is just right for this, sounding fresh, young and agile. Even better, she looks the part, appearing no more than eighteen, slender and very pretty.
The story, briefly, has an abandoned infant, Marie, raised by an entire regiment of soldiers, all of whom she regards as her fathers. Typically of dads, they watch over her jealously. They disapprove of her young man, until he joins the regiment. Meanwhile, wartime has brought an elderly Marquise in contact with the soldiers, and she discovers Marie is her long lost niece. Niece goes regretfully with aunt to learn to be a lady, and aunt tries to marry her off to an even more aristocratic title. The soldiers arrive in the nick of time to rescue her.
The Marquise is a superbly comic role, marvelously inhabited here by veteran mezzo-soprano Joyce Castle. And equally comic is Kazaras in drag as the Duchess of Krackenthorp, the lady with a marriageable son. Considerably taller, thanks to heels and headdress, and twice the width of all the other ladies on stage, the Duchess dominates the scenery singing his/her own choice, a drunken Offenbach aria, accompanied by Castle at the piano.
However, the opera would be less successful were the other singers not up to the level of the principals. Baritone Alexander Hajek makes an excellent Seattle Opera debut as Sergeant Sulpice, perhaps the first of father to Marie and later confidant of the Marquise, while Karl Marx Reyes as her servant and Stephen Fish as a Corporal do well in their roles as does the strong chorus.
The acting is equally important in Daughter, and stage director Emilio Sagi has left no detail neglected to keep the emotions real and the laughs coming. There are several arias which are tearjerkers from Tonio and Marie, sung heartfelt by both tenors and Coburn, and many details on the funny side add immeasurably to the ambience, notably the Marquise’s houseboy, not to mention the maid.
Julio Galan’s design of the opera works seamlessly, with the sets, one a cellar bar in a wartime village, the other a gracious salon in the Marquise’s chateau, the date, about 1943, and costumes to match, plus Connie Yun’s lighting.
The whole production is a charmer, and runs until Novemeber 2.
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