La Rondine - Arteta/Haddock
I've just read Herkku's review of this Washington La Rondine DVD (see #5), and feel a need to show it in another light, since this opera, and this DVD in particular, is one of my most treasured discoveries of recent years. So I'm gathering material from earlier posts and collecting it here.
Of the five versions of
La Rondine currently available on DVD, two are outstanding: this one, with Ainhoa Arteta as Magda, and the Met production with Gheorghiu and Alagna. If you're wondering which to get, then you need both. I truly can't choose between them. Neither is 'best'. Both offer as fine an interpretation of an imperfect opera as could be hoped for, and both are so different in approach that I just don't know how to compare them meaningfully. Both provide, in their completely different ways, some of the loveliest visual spectacles I've ever seen on an opera DVD. In particular, the use of gesture in the Washington DVD is exquisite. Arteta's Magda is very different to Gheorghiu's. Particularly in Act 1, she moves in ways that suggest carefully studied role-playing - she's playing the part of the courtesan, behaving as expected, but then of course we see the cracks appearing. The scene leading up to the Doretta aria is particularly telling - we see her retreat almost defensively into her courtesan role, at first: she moves over to the couch and reclines on it langourously ... then the cracks begin to show. When she sings Doretta's aria there's a deeply moving contrast between what she's singing and how she looks - she stands almost like a porcelain doll, gradually awakening. It's obvious, then, that my take on this is very different from Herkku's (above, #5). I think this is brilliant acting, in fact; Arteta's performance, both as singer and as actor, is as fine as anything I've ever seen.
Indeed, I find it quite impossible to take my eyes off Magda. Ainhoa Arteta plays her in such a way that each gesture is made with grace and beguilingly expressive effect, whether she's singing, or just reacting with others - so that almost regardless of what else is happening, we know she's the focus of attention even if she's in the background. I find myself imagining that her merest touch would bring shivers down the spine. Look at the way she does 'langour' for instance:
This carefully cultivated grace is a crucial part of the performance.
Taking the broader view, the atmosphere of
fin-de-siecle France is evoked exquisitely: there's that strange combination of beauty and decadence, of elegance and melancholy. It's like watching a painting by Tissot coming alive. And in fact the characters do have a tendency to group themselves into beautiful compositions around the stage, as if they were in a painting.
The set for Act 2 is equally beautiful, and the crowd movements very attractively choreographed. The performance of the quartet, however, doesn't have the feeling of lyrical abandon of the Gheorghiu version. In one sense, that restraint seems appropriate for this setting: Gheorghui's swaying and 'I'm-a-party-girl' arm-gestures suit her art deco setting, but wouldn't fit here. Even so, if one were cherry picking favourite 'moments', the Gheorghui version of the quartet would win on points, for me. This is what the Washington set looks like:
Acts 1 and 2 seem to me to be packed with Puccini's most delicious, lyrical music - the leitmotives get everywhere, just when they're most needed for emotional effect. If in Act 1, Arteta's version wins in terms of sheer beauty of presentation and Arteta's singing, Gheorghiu's wins Act 2 on points, general choreography, and a more rapturously sung quartet. If Act 3 lived up to the promises of Acts 1 and 2, then
La Rondine would become my very favourite opera. Alas, it doesn't, in either version. The Gheorghui version ends with Magda leaving Ruggero. The Arteta version ends with Ruggero abandoning Magda, who kills herself by walking into the sea. Either way, there's something seriously not right. The final half of Act 3 is like an unresolved problem no matter which I watch. It's a patched-up business, and it feels like that. The whole development of the ending seems unconvincingly random, and the final outcome is that I wish I'd stopped at the end of Act 2. This isn't to say that there aren't some fine moments in Act 3, but it just doesn't hang together dramatically, and everything about it feels that Puccini didn't know how to fix it.
I came to the Gheorghiu version first, and thought it would be hard to beat - and in some ways these two productions are so different in spirit that they can't be compared. But this is one of the finest traditional opera productions I've ever seen, and in recent weeks, while all my other opera DVDs languish on the shelf, this is the one I keep reaching for. On its own, it would justify owning a DVD player.