Inspired Silliness in Genoa

On the big screen this weekend at Il Teatro Buce was Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment in a new production from Genoa with Juan Diego Florez. Mrs. Buce goes all squiggly giggly or at the sight, or at any rate the sound, of JDF, and it hard to blame her—he’s Pavoratti with six-pack abs. I’m chintzy enough to speculate that he might not be the greatest tenor in the history of the galaxy but he is pretty good (I guess my only real concern is whether you might get sick of him—his voice is so distinctive, so high-saliency that I’m just as glad they don’t play him in the elevator).

Not least of the fun was watching the notoriously picky Italian audience at play, or perhaps at work. They were chillingly standoffish through the first third of the show—no hoots and catcalls, but a numbing sort of reserve. Not a big surprise, I guess: we had a mod staging with French text and (sacre bleu!) American soldiers. It didn’t make any sense and the Italians were not in a forgiving mood.

But Florez broke through their reserve when he nailed nine high C’s in “Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!“ I don’t recall ever hearing an Italian audience uncork it so completely.

One beneficiary, perhaps unintended but richly deserving, was Florez’ leading lady, Patrizia Ciofi, hitherto unknown to me. I thought she was a marvel and the audience, loosened up by Florez’ pyrotechnics, proved suitably receptive. Ciofi had a tough assignment: anyone in the role works in the shadow of Joan Sutherland who owned it for so long (just as Pavoratti owned Florez’). Sutherland is a marvel, but she is very nearly grotesque; Ciofi is more human, and humane. She’s earthy, insinuating, flirtatious—and tough enough to match the mostly male cast.

I see from her fansite that Ciofi is an Italian who doesn’t sing in America very often. An Italian critic found her “guttural” and “gasping,” and at the limit of her power. Guttural she might have been, though it didn’t hurt the drama; the gasping I guess I missed.

Amazon reviewers cluck about a “modernization” to World War II, and complain that it doesn’t make any sense. Strictly speaking, they are right: it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But this is a comic opera after all—more than that, a determinedly silly comic opera, and a little incoherence isn’t really a big issue.