Lyric Opera 2023-2024 Issue 3 - Daughter of the Regiment

23 | Lyric Opera of Chicago ‘Monsieur Donizetti seems to treat us like a conquered country; it is a veritable invasion. One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris, but only of the opera houses of Monsieur Donizetti.’ Hector Berlioz’s newspaper review of the rst performance of Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment ( La lle du régiment ) at Paris’s Opéra-Comique on February 11, 1840 set the work in the context of the many other productions of the Italian’s operas then dominating the city’s houses. The carping and unpleasantly nationalistic note struck by the great French composer was echoed by other critics: The opera was facile and unconvincing, plagiarized, too noisy, too disjointed, too Italian (and for others, not Italian enough), merely a big “bag of candies,” and so on. Happily, The Daughter of the Regiment survived this early barrage of criticism—in style. The French public disregarded Berlioz and his acolytes, warmly welcomed the Donizetti “invasion,” and was pleased to count itself among the Italian’s “conquests.” The sparkling opera was to become one of his most popular works in France over the course of the nineteenth century. From 1848, it entered the Opéra- Comique’s repertoire, and it stayed there until 1916. In 1914, on the eve of the World War I, it celebrated its 1,000th performance. Part at least of The Daughter of the Regiment ’s popularity across France, moreover, lay in its brazen display of patriotic national fervor. This was particularly evident in the stirringly militaristic “Salut à la France” (“Long live France”) sung by the eponymous heroine Marie, an orphan born to the sound of cannon- re and adopted by France’s 21st “La France” Regiment. In the 1840s, the French government still associated Rouget de Lisle’s 1792 Marseillaise with rebels and critics. Before the Marseillaise was adopted as the of cial national anthem in 1879, festive national celebrations on July 14 often involved the performance of Marie’s “Salut à la France.” The custom declined (along with Donizetti’s reputation) in the early twentieth century, but in a notable exception, the Franco-American soprano Lily Pons sang the aria at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1941, draped in a tricolor ag bearing the Cross of Lorraine emblem that Charles de Gaulle’s Free French had adopted for national Resistance against the Nazis. It was the diva’s Casablanca moment. Donizetti can hardly have imagined such a trajectory for what he called “his little opera,” but he certainly intended The Daughter of the Regiment to atter French sensibilities and national pride. The Paris production of Lucia di Lammermoor in 1837 had brought him new commissions and the popularity in Paris that Berlioz so resented. But The Daughter of the Regiment was the rst of his many operas to be world- premiered in the city, and the composer was aware that its success would consecrate his talent, crown his whole career, and open the road to fatter fees and more commissions. After all, Paris was the world capital of opera: The city boasted an enviable ensemble of opera houses and troupes, a very large, knowledgeable, and By Colin Jones Donizetti’s Conquest Gaetano Donizetti, in a portrait by Giovanni Carnevali Courtesy of the Museo Donizettiano,Bergamo, Italy The critics panned the composer’s glittering comedy— but he won the hearts of Paris.