Review: La Fille du Regiment

I wrote this several weeks ago and didn't post it then.

Opera plots are scant, to say the least. Any novice screenwriter, any aspiring romance writer, any tenderfoot western writer could devise a better plot than the average opera. In general, boy meets girl, boy and girl separate/are separated, boy and girl are reunited, and then, depending on whether it is a comedy or a tragedy, they either die or live happily ever after. Original?

Hardly.

Ah, but the music.

Yesterday, I felt such joy! After watching a performance of La Fille du Regiment filmed at the Met and presented at my local wide screen movie theater, I felt that I was almost walking on air. An abnormal response I assure you, considering the three most joyous moments in my life, the births of my three children, I spent flat on my back!

A friend of mine has structured his life around the idea that people should never leave a theater without feeling something. Unfortunately, to him, the "feeling something" is most nearly akin to the Greek ideal of Catharsis. I don't entirely disagree with him, but joy is something, too; something too seldom felt. I admire this friend who has accomplished much with his life, but I want joy in my life, as well as catharsis.

In La Fille du Regiment, coloratura soprano, Natalie Dessay's, mobile face and sparkling singing meshed with the effortlessly dazzling Juan Diego Florez. He was even awarded the honor of an encore at the Met for his aria "A mis amis." (Unfortunately, we were not given that opportunity.) I have seldom felt so much from one singer singing. There are not words. The performance went beyond my enormous vocabulary to only what can be felt and not said.

When the euphoria wore off last night, I started to wonder why I have denied myself this joy for so many years. I love music, vocal music of any kind I have been almost phobic about going to events alone. In the past I have bought two tickets for events thinking I could find someone to go with me. I'm not really sure why I've always thought that I couldn't go alone. But I'm over that now. (I hope) You can expect me at all kinds of performances by myself.