LA RONDINE

Sumptuous art deco staging of opera. (Review by William Charlton-Perkins)

Puccini’s La Rondine, the High Definition transmission from New York’s Metropolitan Opera now showing at Sterkinekor Cinema Nouveau, is among the most successful we have had so far this season. The much vaunted husband and wife partnership of Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu is certainly compelling in this seldom-heard piece which they have championed for more than a decade. They are both in fine form, notwithstanding the mixed international press they have had of late, and despite the Met’s general manager Peter Gelb announcing before curtain-up that the soprano was suffering from a heavy cold.

There is little evidence of this here as her performance takes wing, though by comparison with her celebrated EMI recording of the opera, made with her husband in 1996, there is inevitably less tonal bloom now. She looks ravishing however, as indeed does the production as a whole, a sumptuous art deco staging that showcases the world’s premiere opera company to great effect.

If La Rondine is not quite A-list Puccini beside the composer’s Big Four (Bohème, Butterfly, Tosca, Turandot), it is worth more than a cursory visit, as are his other offspring, notably Il Trittico, comprising the three one-act works, Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. It certainly has its of share gorgeous melodies, masterful orchestral coloration, superb choral and ensemble writing, detailed cameo roles, et al.

Sometimes cited as the Cinderella of the Puccini oeuvre, La Rondine morphed out of an invitation the composer received in 1913 to write a Viennese operetta - along the lines of The Merry Widow and other cornerstone pieces of the so-called ‘Silver Age’ of this genre that in turn spawned today’s musical theatre. With the onset of World War I, the composer opted to pen a fully fledged opera which turned out to be a light, romantic musical hybrid which nonetheless abounds in lilting waltz numbers. It premiered in Monte Carlo in 1917.

Collaborating with the librettist Giuseppe Adami, Puccini adapted a story about a young Parisian, Magda, lavishly kept by a wealthy banker, Rambaldo. A modern yet vulnerable woman, she falls for Ruggero, son of a respectable rural family. The boy meets girl plot unfolds with much heartache ensuing as she opts finally to return to sugar daddy, sparing her lover the humiliation of introducing her to his bourgeois parents.

There are parallels with La Bohème and Verdi’s La Traviata, only Magda gets to live on, rather than play out a protracted death to the strains of shimmering strings. She does get her sobbing tenor, mind, with hubbie Roberto doing his bit to the manner born in this production by Nicolas Joël (incidentally the first at the Met in more than six decades).

Alagna is relaxed, sexy and charming in the first two acts, and pours forth torrents of burnished vocal bravado in the finale. The rest of the cast is fine, barring the wobbly sounding veteran bass, Samuel Ramey as Rambaldo, a sad shadow of his former glory. Standouts are the opera’s second couple, Rumanian tenor Marius Brenciu, making his Met debut as the poet, Prunier, and the young soubrette, Lisette Oropesa, a graduate of the Met’s Young Artist Lindemann Development programme, feisty as the maid who, coincidently, is also called Lisette. Conductor Marco Armiliato delivers a committed, well held together account of the score, clearly relishing the intricate harmonic challenges Puccini poses his players.

This film is well worth experiencing, not least for the endearing chemistry of its two stars, palpably an adoring couple who love sharing their gifts with each other – and the world. - William Charlton-Perkins