Donizetti Society Past Production Report - The Daughter of the Regiment, St Louis, 2011

Small picture of Donizetti

Donizetti, The Daughter of the Regiment

St. Louis, May 28 - June 26, 2011.

Photographs copyright Ken Howard, courtesy of the Opera Theater of St Louis

Photographs from the St Louis production of Donizetti's opera, part of their 2011 Festival season. In the manner of recent productions, the Duchess of Crackentorp is played by a well known personality, who is encouraged to expand the role with various self references but which risks spoiling the pace of a production. In this case the Duchess was the singer Sylvia McNair and she appears to have rather overstayed her welcome for Sarah Bryan Miller, Stltoday.com, who otherwise clearly enjoyed the production, "a thorough delight", once she had got over the fact that the French soldiers were wearing red rather than blue. She noted that, although it is a light comic opera, " it makes some serious vocal demands. This cast was up to it".

For Robert Duffy, The St Louis Beacon, McNair alone was worth the price of admission and after some tussling with his conscience about the role of such operas given the state of the world, he also gave himself over to its enjoyment, "beautiful, hilarious, infectious", rationalising that "In times of trial (and when in the history of the world have men and women not lived in times of trial?) the breather may gain us healthy passage through our dismal history, so it becomes a coping mechanism, a means of survival. It is the landing on the steep stairway, a place to catch your breath."

Lew Prince in the Riverfront Times confined himself to the performance which he found "Beautifully sung, artfully staged, frothy and entertaining".