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GREAT VOICES, FINE STAGING, PITY ABOUT THE DUMB STORY

"La Rondine" is only as good as its bling, writes James C. Taylor of the current production at the Metropolitan Opera. Three big stars, opulent sets and a bit of authentic nookie were needed to raise this silly Puccini work above the level of leaden chintz ...

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In opera, as in life, great wealth comes with a steep price tag. That is the lesson of Puccini’s "La Rondine", both on stage, with its courtesan heroine Magda, and off. In 1913, Puccini, the most famous living opera composer in the world, was offered 200,000 Kronen to create an operetta for Vienna’s Karltheater. Puccini was disdainful of operetta, especially when he received the treatment of the script.  “An operetta is something I shall never do,” he famously wrote a friend (after cashing the check and receiving a medal from the Austrian Emperor). He insisted he would instead write: “a comic opera.”

The result, "La Rondine", is neither operetta nor comic, but rather a bastardised hybrid that often feels like cocktail party banter set to music. It also feels passé and old fashioned. Unlike the chromaticism and hints of atonalism that one hears in the modern-leaning "Turandot", Puccini’s final work, La Rondine (his penultimate full-length opera) is the aural equivalent of a guest who’s come late to the party. Part of this was beyond Puccini’s control: a year after he accepted the commission to write this fluffy, operatic pastry for Viennese society, war broke out. Italy and Austria were now enemies, complicating the premiere. But more to the point, by the time Puccini was finished writing it in 1915, the gilded age of Viennese operetta was over. Trying to open a light opera in Vienna in 1916 was tantamount to premiering a silent film in 1928 or taking your mortgage-based securities company public in late 2008. 

Because of this, 2009--a year that begins with a serious hubris hangover--feels like the right time to appreciate what his publisher Tito Riccordi called: “Puccini’s Austrian folly.” And with the sort of luck that was missing at the premiere (which eventually took place in neutral Monte Carlo in 1917), the Metropolitan Opera has scheduled "La Rondine" for this January. As auspicious as the timing is the Met’s lineup: Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna, the husband and wife diva and divo, are the romantic leads: Magda and Ruggero. The veteran bass Samuel Ramey is pure luxury casting as Magda’s sugar-daddy, Rambaldo. The staging is a lavish, well-regarded production from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden that shrewdly updates the action from the stately Second Empire to the decadent Lost Generation.

None of these elements disappoint. Gheorghiu is a joy to watch as Magda. The Romanian superstar can sometimes feel calculated and sentimental in her gestures, but these ticks fold nicely into her character as a kept woman. What’s more, her voice fits the role with the same seductive ease as her slinky, jazz-era flapper gown--and it can still dazzle. In the show’s famous aria, the way Gheorghiu holds the rich, pianissimo notes (A-to-High C-back-to-A) as she cries “Ah! Mio sogno” seems to make time stop to appreciate it.

Her husband, Roberto Alagna has lost a good deal of the ring and lustre of his voice since 1996 when his wife and he recorded "La Rondine" for EMI, yet he remains a warm stage presence and a reliable tenor. Plus, he and his wife’s authentic canoodling in Act II and III go a long way towards convincing us that Magda and Ruggero are actually in love—something the junk libretto (which, like most operettas of the time, revolves around mistaken identity among the noble classes) can never achieve.

Many have tried tweaking the libretto in an attempt to make "La Rondine" richer.  Puccini even rewrote a different ending for the 1920 Palermo premiere, and a recent production at Los Angeles Opera used a mixture of the scores, complete with a Kate Chopin/Awakening-style suicide at the end) but this only shows how shoddy the whole thing is. The best measure of "La Rondine"’s subpar quality is that these performances are the Met’s first in over 70 years. (The performance I attended was only the 21st performance of ever—the night before, the Met presented Puccini's "La Boheme" for the 1,207th time).

What this production ultimately proves is that "La Rondine" is only as good as its bling. With three big stars (where really, only one—the soprano—is needed), opulent sets that look as if they were hidden VIP rooms stolen from beneath Vienna’s Klimt walled-Secession, and the intangible quality of a real-life married couple (who are not ashamed of—and perhaps even prefer—onstage PDA), the Met’s current staging must be considered a success just by making La Rondine rise above the level of leaden chintz. 

Even in the best of times (and even at the Met), deluxe revivals of minor works like this are rare. If you wish to experience this one-aria opera (and “Che il bel sogno” is indeed a classic Puccini melody that will stick with you long after the foolishness of the plot is long forgotten), now would seem to be the time. That is, until "La Rondine"'s inevitable revival in another 70 years, when some director sets this tale of choosing money over love in the decadent  fin de siècle of the late 1990s-early 2000s, to great comic effect,

Photo credit: courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera

(James C. Taylor is the host of "Theatre Talk", a radio programme on KCRW. He writes about theatre and opera for the Los Angeles Times and Opera Magazine. His last piece for More Intelligent Life was about "Doctor Atomic".)