With the weak drizzle on Sunday afternoon, I was surprised to see Lebanon Opera House less than full for the opening of Opera North’s production of Daughter of the Regiment.
And once the show began, I felt especially badly for all the Upper Valley music- and theater-lovers who had stayed away and missed a dazzling and bubbly work performed with exceptional charm by the company’s young resident artists. From the first brassy notes from the orchestra, it was clear that the audience was in for a treat, a beautifully sung and bravely acted classic of comic opera.
Gaetano Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment, first performed in Paris in 1840, tells the story of Marie, an orphan found by a regiment of French soldiers and raised among them. Conflict ensues when she falls in love with a young Tyrolean man, Tonio, at the same time the regiment runs into the Marquise of Berkenfield, who’s trying to get back to her estate. The marquise learns Marie’s identity and asserts that she is the girl’s aunt, taking Marie away from her beloved regiment, just as Tonio has won her hand.
Sung in French, with supertitles and dialogue in English, the opera contains the elements of classical comedy, from questions about identity to unlikely contrivances, all of which are resolved in true love. The outcome, as the sportswriters say, is never in doubt.
Daughter hinges on a clutch of key roles, the daughter herself chief among them. Lindsay Ohse inhabited the role with an apple-cheeked, tomboyish delight, swaggering around the stage with the soldiers. She also demonstrated a lovely coloratura soprano voice, from first to last.
As with Shakespearean comedies, what’s so remarkable about Donizetti’s work is its ability to tap into a well of sorrow, even as it makes us laugh. Daughter of the Regiment is full of such moments, lending the work a touching, human scale, despite the powerful, soaring voices of the cast.
Nowhere was this more striking than when Marie takes her leave of the regiment, the soldiers of which she calls her fathers. As she laments, she comes across a pair of the regiment’s standard-issue blue socks, which she hands to a soldier, who dabs his eyes with them.
Tonio, who has just joined the regiment and won the permission of her fathers to seek her hand, cannot follow as her aunt takes her away. His exuberant celebration over becoming a soldier and, soon he hopes, a husband, is dashed.
The song of celebration, Ah, mes amis, quel jour de fete, is a high point of the show, and tenor Andrew Surrena carries it off. The aria’s multiple high Cs are a stern test, and Surrena aces it.
Ohse and Surrena have great stage and vocal chemistry, a quality most evident when Tonio is professing his love to Marie and she responds skeptically (Depuis l’instant ou, dans mes bras).
Heather Gallagher, as the Marquise, and Alex Soare, as Sergeant Sulpice, Marie’s chief protector, play the grown-ups among the young soldiers. Gallagher captures her character’s flightiness, pride and, ultimately, shame and mercy, while Soare projects the world-weary authority and integrity of a senior enlisted man.
The second act opens with Marie in her aunt’s mansion, all dolled up but still very much the former canteen girl of the regiment. She is to be married off to the son of the Duchess of Krakenthorp.
“Marie, please try to be a good girl,” the Marquise pleads.
“They have tried to win me over with jewels and clothes,” Marie sings, but it’s no use. “I guess I must learn to live with my suffering.”
The regiment, with Tonio, marches in to save the day, but not before the Duchess, played by Broadway veteran Maureen Brennan, sings Stephen Sondheim’s marvelously bawdy I Never Do Anything Twice, a song that points up the uncommon chasteness of a comic opera about a young woman living with a regiment of soldiers. Brennan, who seems a slight figure, even among the many young performers on the stage, has a big voice, and drew some of the biggest laughs of the night.
“We will never allow her to marry someone she does not love,” the regiment sings. The Marquise relents, singing “I will not sacrifice my family for pride.”
Daughter of the Regiment is one of the most complete entertainments I’ve experienced in the Upper Valley, in the sense that it was thoroughly transporting to its time and place. The performers were so captivating that the opera was absorbing from beginning to end.
Some of the key roles are shared: For example, Ohse is sharing the role of Marie with Martha Eason, and Surrena shares Tonio with Martin Clark.
But this production is in the sure hands of conductor Louis Burkot and director Evan Pappas; the other singers will no doubt be as able and as well prepared as the ones who appeared on Sunday.
Performances of Opera North’s production of
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
