BLO Serves Up a Delightful
Daughter of the Regiment
Donizetti’s comic opera is transported to a Revolutionary Boston setting in this lighter-than-air production that also has a patriotic heft.
By Robert Nesti
It was fitting that the lighter-than-air Boston Lyric Opera production of The Daughter of the Regiment would be at the Emerson-Colonial Theatre. It was in this theater that a century-or-so ago those breezy musical-comedies by such talents as George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were first seen prior to New York. This production is their happy descendant.
That Gaetano Donizetti’s 1840 comic opera would adapt so well to this treatment isn’t surprising: it is written with musical sequences and spoken dialogue; and it has a silly plot, much like those musical-comedies. This new treatment came about when Boston playwright Kirsten Greenidge was commissioned by the company to write an Americanized version of the opera as the anchor presentation in their “Voices of Revolution” initiative, celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday. Greenidge, working with director/choreographer John De Los Santos, took the opera that written in French and set 20 years earlier during the Napoleonic Wars somewhere in the Alps, and transposed it to 1775 Boston. They sat the first act under the famous Liberty Tree that sat just blocks away from the Old State House, where the Boston Massacre took place.
Greenidge says she was inspired in her characterization of Marie (Brenda Rae) – the daughter of the regiment from the title – by the heroics of Bostonian Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man and fought with the Continental Army, even refusing a doctor’s care when injured by a gunshot wound for fear her identity would be found out. After the Revolution, she revealed her story and became a celebrity, often appearing at speaking engagements dressed as a man as she had during the war.
But Greenidge doesn’t toy with the story to have cross-dressing Marie. As in the original, she is a foundling raised by a surprisingly progressive-minded military brigade who welcome her into their ranks. After joining in the battle to drive the British troops from Boston, she confesses she has fallen in love with a Frenchman, Tonio (Spencer Britten), who saved her from falling to her death on a hiking trip. In turn, she saves him when the militia men believe him to be a spy. To prove his love, he joins the militia; but before they can wed, a society matron, Widow Birkenfeld (Sandra Piques Eddy), who claims to be Marie’s long-lost relative, and takes her away, hoping she will marry a nobleman.
By the second act, Marie is (uncomfortably) being mentored by the Widow Birkenfeld, who says she’s her aunt, into becoming a proper Bostonian, but the arrival of Tonio and the militia men only complicates matters. As does the arrival of the Duchess Crakenthorpe (Neal Ferreira), the opera’s famous non-singing role but here given a moment to gleefully sing a transposed aria from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Prince Ida about how disagreeable she is. It is a clever stroke and points to the conception’s loose structure, not unlike those earlier musical-comedies in which specialty numbers were dropped in for no particular reason other than to allow a performer to shine. Here Ferreira shines with frightening comedic hauteur and a convincing alto.
Musically what has made Daughter of the Regiment famous is nothing sung by Marie, but Tonio’s first-act aria “Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!” (“Ah! my friends, what a day of celebration!”), due to the demands of the tenor singing nine high Cs in quick succession. To his credit, Spencer Britten sings them with conviction, his voice exquisitely blossoming in the final section. He also proves to be a deft comic actor who has lovely chemistry with soprano Brenda Rae. She is simply wonderful, comically boyish in the first half and ruefully challenged by the conventions of femininity in the second. As with Britten, Rae skillfully glides through her musically challenging part, and her Marie has charm, vivacity, and even pathos when she sings of being trapped in her Aunt’s home like a prisoner, nicely represented by a skeletal set of a Colonial-era home.
Kenneth Kellogg makes for the most likable Colonel Sulpice, Marie’s close confidant in the regiment. He joins Rae and Britten in what is pretty much the show’s closest thing to a musical-comedy showstopper, the second act trio, “Tous les trois réunis” (“The three of us reunited”), staged in an effective Broadway-style. Sandra Piques Eddy is just delightful as the Widow Birkenfeld; and Neal Ferreira stole the show, or at least their second act gown did, as the Duchess Crakenthorpe. The ensemble brought a giddy exuberance to the production, and they sang the numerous choral numbers with conviction. Director/choreographer John De Los Santos’s staging (with nicely integrated period dances) is airborne from the start and never touches ground. Liliana Duque Piñeiro’s set design is simple but evocative; as is Reaa Behjat’s lighting; and Dana Botez’s costumes move from the drab grays and browns of the opening scenes to the MGM Technicolor of the garden party at its conclusion, with a parade of period gowns and the regiment in their Continental Army blue regalia.
Greenidge’s delightful English-language adaptation falls easily on the ears and is in tune with the light comedy of its source; but there’s something more: a sense that this at first rag-tag militia is fighting for something worthwhile, which gives this production a patriotic heft. And it is achieved without heavy flag-waving (though a Colonial-era flag is waved at one point), rather with deft texturing throughout of the values these most genial Bostonians were fighting for. If an opera production can be Boston Strong – in the best possible way – it is this one.
Remaining performances of The Daughter of the Regiment, presented by the Boston Lyric Opera, are Friday, May 1 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, May 3 at 3pm, at the Emerson Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston Street, Boston, MA. Visit the BLO site for more details.
Wath this promotional trailer for the production: