Royal Opera House
Slushy bel canto isn’t usually my thing and in lots of ways Linda di Chamounix was just like the others. Two lovers, they get separated, girl goes mad. Nothing I hadn’t seen before.
But there was this one scene in the middle that made it different. Most of Donizetti’s women are a bit pathetic and goody-goody and Linda is too, she stays a virgin for years. But this scene in the middle was like something out of Donizetti’s comedies. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like it, with comedy and tragedy mixed, not like this I mean. So not a great opera and in a way it would be better if Donizetti hadn’t written Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena and good stuff like that because Linda isn’t as good as them so it’s hard not to see it and think, you can do better than this Gaetano mate. But it’s not a bad opera at all and how many operas don’t have massive plot holes? And I mean the plot isn’t Donizetti’s fault. Maybe even the music wasn’t Donizetti’s fault, he can only write what the libretto inspires him to write can’t he? Actually the music wasn’t that bad, neither was Mark Elder’s conducting.
Eglise Gutierrez was Linda, I’d never heard of her and a lot of the critics were a bit mean about her. And her voice wasn’t anything special, actually it was a little bit odd, with a big full sound in the lower half of her range and a very thin almost soubrette sort of thing at the top. But it was just such a really good performance. It was a concert performance, she was singing from a score and she was wearing this dress that just looked so wrong for someone who was supposed to be poor like Linda. But she was so much into the character you just forgot all that as soon as she started singing. You forgot it wasn’t staged, you actually forgot she wasn’t the most amazing singer in the world. Actually her singing kind of helped with the character, it just helped you to see Linda as someone who was really struggling through life. A totally perfect performance wouldn’t have worked as well I don’t think.
Marianna Pizzolato sang Pierotto which was a trouser role, she was the best singer there. Everything she sang sounded great, her voice was really big but the tone was in the counter tenor sort of direction so I had no trouble thinking like, that’s a bloke. Stephen Costello also did a good job as Carlo, Linda’s bloke. Not one of those big star tenors but he’s actually better than most of them. Ludivic Tezier as Linda’s father Loustalot and Balint Szabo as the prefect were good, apparently he’s a clergyman type so probably not one of those bossy twat school prefects, they asked me to be one of those last year but I didn’t fancy it. Luciano Botelho was the Intendant, I thought he was one of the Young Artists but he’s not. Never mind though, you can still watch out for him, he’s going to sing at Glyndebourne soon.
Alessandro Corbelli was brilliant too, he was the Marquis of Boisfleury, this old guy who tries to chat up Linda. His scene was actually a bit weird. The rest of the opera was proper serious stuff all the way through but then right in the middle you got this really funny bit and it was so good, my favourite bit in the opera actually. Eglise was funny too. What happens it the Marquis puts the moves on Linda and she’s just not having any of it, then she manages to scare him off. She’s a goody-goody and she goes a bit over the top sometimes but seriously, this girl is no pushover.
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