Some twelve years ago I was invited to a Sunday lunch party in Marylebone and sat beside Elena Roger. Sunday was her only day off so it was flattering that she was prepared to spend it with my friends and me.
She was playing Eva Perón in Evita in the West End; appropriately she is Argentinian. We spoke of this and that until it emerged that she had never seen an opera outside South America. It was a “Cinderella must go to the ball” moment. Her only availability was on Sundays and my friends bought four tickets to a Sunday matinee at Covent Garden to see La fille du régiment.
We must digress a little. This Donizetti dazzler was justly immensely popular in the second half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. A comic opera about the French at war, albeit the Napoleonic wars, in the 20th century was hardly apt. However, in the 1960s it was revived to acclaim with Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti in the leading roles. (As so often was the case Mr Joan Sutherland, Richard Bonynge, was in the pit.) Joan Sutherland’s reputation was already established and Pavarotti was discovered. Nor did it escape the notice of Wexford Opera. They put it on in 1957 with Geraint Evans.
Since then it had been a sleeping beauty unti it was re-discovered at Covent Garden in 2007 in Laurent Pelly’s production. It was a great success with Natalie Dessay (coloratura soprano) and Juan Diego Flórez (tenor) singing their hearts out. As you know JDF is Peruvian so my friends asked if they could take Elena to meet him in his dressing room – permission granted. There was a fairly big fly in the ointment for me; she was taking her boyfriend so Christopher was not going to the ball. Fortunately the boyfriend had to return unexpectedly to Argentina and I was his replacement. To digress, I once stood in for Sir Georg Solti at dinner – not in the orchestra pit.
Pelly’s production has been revived many times at Covent Garden and the Met. Tonight (Saturday) the last performance at the Met is on at cinemas and I’m looking forward to it immensely. I should mention that JDF oozed charisma when we saw him in a vest wiping his make-up off. He said he’d go to hear Elena in her show. Here is Javier Camarena at the Met singing an encore and nailing those high Cs.
Indeed, a magical day that was all those years ago with JDF in his singlet. (My geographic grasp of LatAm was a bit hazy then – assuming someone from Argentina would surely know everyone from Peru…). And so was the Met yesterday, the performance as fresh as when we saw it at the ROH. With a few extra high Cs thrown in.