Product Details

• Actors: Patrizia Ciofi, Juan Diego Florez, Nicola Ulivieri, Francesco Franci, Orchestra del Teatro Carlo Felice
• Directors: Riccardo Frizza, Emilio Sagi
• Format: Classical, Color, Subtitled, NTSC, DTS Surround Sound
• Language: Unknown (DTS 5.1), Unknown (PCM Stereo), French (DTS 5.1), French (PCM Stereo)
• Subtitles: Chinese, English, German, Italian, Spanish
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Decca
• DVD Release Date: October 10, 2006
• Run Time: 159 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000FIGXGM
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #160,289 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment aims to please and it succeeds, with its catchy tunes, wildly difficult showpieces for the principles, and a simple, if also simplistic, narrative line. This 2005 live performance at Genoa's Teatro Carlo Felice features virtuoso singing by tenor Juan Diego Flórez as Tonio and soprano Patrizia Ciofi, as Marie, the "daughter" of the soldiers who have adopted her. Tonio's big Act I scene and aria, "Ah! mes amis," was a famous showpiece for Pavarotti and Flórez is in that league, nailing the aria's nine high Cs with an ease mere mortals reserve just for breathing. This is knock-'em-dead singing and the audience demands (and gets) an encore. Ciofi's Marie is well acted and sung with lyric beauty and coloratura fireworks. The chief supporting roles are done to a turn. Bass Nicola Ulivieri is a firm-voiced Sulpice, the sergeant who helps the lovers, while Francesca Franci is a wonderful Marquise, displaying subtle comic acting and a rich mezzo as Marie's "aunt" who has grand plans for her future. Conductor Riccardo Frizza leads the Genoa forces with stylish zest.

Stage director Emilio Sagi, has moved the action from Napoleonic times to a French village in the closing days of World War II, replacing the French regiment with victorious Yanks, which makes for some textual anomalies but none that impede enjoyment. This video version offers functional direction but it's often unflattering to the singers (especially Marie who's sometimes shot from above in lighting that shadows part of her face), and uses excessive close-ups and cuts to reaction shots that distract from the main events. Still, a don't-miss buffo opera brilliantly sung. --Dan Davis

Product Description

DONIZETTI:LA FILLE DU REGIMENT - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding La fille du Régiment, October 11, 2006

By 

T. C. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Donizetti - La Fille du Régiment (DVD)

Let me say it at once: This is a sensational opera DVD. One of the very best I have seen lately!!

The opera takes place around the year 1815, when the French occupied the Tyrol area. The Director Emilio Sagi transferred the action to a small village in France in the final days of World War II. This transformation seems very successful to me. The staged is designed in Act I and II as a large family-run bar. The sets are beautiful and rich in details. In Act III our heroine Marie's aunt, the Duchess tries to arrange Marie's marriage to La marquise de Berkenfield son. So in Act III we are in the Duchess home, which is designed elegantly, but is not overloaded.

The orchestra plays splendidly for the Italian conductor Riccardo Frizza. The two leading roles are Marie and her beloved Tonio. Marie is sung here by one of the best lyric Italian sopranos of today, Patrizia Ciofi. The voice is beautiful and with amazing floating high notes. She is very slim so it amazes me from where all this volume of sound is coming... but it is not only about the perfect voice production. Her singing is refined, full of nuance and emotion. She is an outstanding actress too. The audience responds with prolonged and loud applauses after her three arias, and even in the middle of a musical piece, sometimes the audience cannot wait and those amazing high notes are followed with loud applauses.

On her side, a superstar tenor: the Peruvian Juan Diego Flórez. What an amazing singer. He delivers his first great and very famous aria Ah! mes amis brilliantly. This aria is notorious in that it includes nine high Cs!. The audience goes crazy after the aria, so as encore, Flórez sings it once more!! The delicate third Act aria is done in an exquisite and very moving way. The audience goes crazier...

Other members of the cast are very good. I liked especially the Duchess of Francesca Franci. This is not an especially pleasant mezzo voice, but she uses it effectively and creates a real figure. As this is an Italian production, French diction of some of the singers is not perfect (mainly Nicola Ulivieri as Suplice), but Ciofi and Flórez sing and speak very good French.

Technical quality - picture and sound is first rate. I cannot recommend this DVD highly enough. It presents singing of rare quality, at least on DVD...

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A production that marches its way to perfection, October 25, 2006

By 

Toni Bernhard (Davis, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Donizetti - La Fille du Régiment (DVD)

La Fille du Regiment has too many "rata-tat-tat" marching choruses for it to be my favorite Donizetti comedy, but it has some magnificent bel canto pieces (like "Il faut partir") and some great comic moments (like the music lesson in Act II that requires the soprano playing Marie to purposefully sing off-key). This production succeeds on all levels.

The director cleverly sets the action in a French village in the final days of World War II, after the Germans have withdrawn. Marie is the daughter of an American army captain who has died, resulting in her being "adopted" by the entire regiment. Tonio is a young French villager whose love for Marie leads him to join the American ranks. The updated setting works well. The relationships among the characters feel even more authentic than in the opera's original Tyrolean setting, and the Act I and Act II sets invoke the historical period well - Act I taking place in a bar in the French village and Act II in the chateau of the Marquise who is determined to turn tomboy Marie into a refined woman.

Usually the soprano playing Marie (the fille du regiment) is the star of the show, but in this production, Patrizia Ciofi must share those honors with Juan Diego Florez who plays Tonio. Florez must be the best lyric tenor around today. His "Ah! mes amis" is worth the price of the DVD alone. He hits each of its famous nine high-C's with such precision, ease, and punch that I almost came out of my seat nine times! And then nine turns to 18 as he encores the piece. (And if 18 isn't enough for you, Florez performs excerpts from "Ah! mes amis" on the bonus DVD, treating us to his own commentary on each note prior to our seeing him sing it.)

Patrizia Ciofi has a beautiful lyric soprano voice that is incredibly strong given her slight build. She sings with precise attention to phrasing and just floats those high notes. Her voice blends well with Florez's, making their duets a delight. My only difficulty with Ciofi is that she lacks a certain ease onstage (this is true in the other performances I've seen her in: La Traviata and Lucie de Lammermoor). There may be nothing she can do about it, but I'm always aware of how hard she's working at singing (I can see it in her facial contortions). In a comic opera, this effort sometimes detracts from the comedy. Beverly Sills famously called the role of Marie, "Lucille Ball with high notes." There's no Lucille Ball in Ciofi's performance simply because she isn't relaxed enough to project that kind of screwball comedy. That said, Ciofi demonstrates that this opera need not rely on slapstick; using her dramatic abilities, Ciofi gets us to focus less on the comedy and more on Marie's relationship to the other characters: to her surrogate father (Sulpice), to her newfound "aunt" (the Marquise), and, of course, to her lover, Tonio. Ciofi offers stunning renditions of Marie's slow, poignant arias and is justly rewarded by the audience for her expressive, nuanced singing. Francesca Franci does a fine job as the Marquise, making her into a flesh and blood character. Nicola Ulivieri, with his full-bodied bass voice, sings and acts the part of Sulpice convincingly.

And then, as icing on the cake, there's that bonus DVD with several special features. One of them, "Backstage with La Fille" is brilliant. In it, the director takes 14 scenes from the opera and shows each one in rehearsal and then cuts to the scene in performance. It's instructive and fun. For example, we see Ciofi and Florez, in street clothes, rehearsing one of their Act I duets when the conductor suddenly stops the music and says something like, "Wait, wait. The orchestra is playing at one tempo, Patrizia is singing at another, and Juan Diego at yet another. Can we all please perform at the same speed?" Then the scene cuts to the performance where, of course, the orchestra and the two players perform the piece to perfection. There's another great rehearsal moment when, first Florez, and then Ciofi each sing their final note terribly off key; the two of them turn and give each other a priceless look, like they've just smelled rotten eggs.

This is a DVD (two DVD's actually) to treasure.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Lively Staging of a Beloved Opera, May 7, 2007

By 

Timothy Kearney (Haverhill, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Donizetti - La Fille du Régiment (DVD)

LA FILLE DU REGIMENT, with its lighthearted music and vocal fireworks, is a favorite that has spurts of being staged due more to a dearth of singers who can perform the roles than anything else. In the 1960's and 70's, Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti wowed audiences the world over and recorded what is considered by many to be the definitive recording of the work. Today, the popular and gifted light tenor Juan Diego Florez has made the role of Tonio his own, and this DVD has captured Florez' vocal abilities and stage presence well. Likewise Patrizia Ciofi is a compelling Marie. Neither Florez nor Ciofi match the Sutherland/Pavarotti pairing, but both are more vocally suited for the roles. Ideally the role of Tonio should be performed by a tenor with a lighter voice than Pavarotti's (even though he's great in the role and his fuller voice, especially at the time he recorded it, is phenomenal), and casting Florez is nearly perfect, reminding listeners of Alfredo Kraus). Ciofi is likewise at home in her performance, at least vocally.

If this were a recording, it would probably be a five star disc. However, it's a DVD, so the visual has to be taken into account too. For some reason, Teatro Carlo Fenice decided to update the story from late 18th/early 19th century France to World War II with the Americans and French at war with each other, not exactly historically accurate. The problem I had with the updating is that it doesn't match the story itself. An orphan girl being adopted by an army regiment that views the girl as a daughter and never in a sexual way, is not the most believable story, unless it happens at a time when we can naively imagine such a story. The Marquise "adopting" Marie and trying to refine her also seems more plausible in an earlier day. Instead, the updating seems out of place and antics seemed silly in an updated staging whereas setting it back to its original setting makes it a bit more believable. Though the staging at times could be distracting, but never so distracting that it took away from the wonderful performances. Keep in mind too, the cameras would have picked up facial expression that would have been missed by the audience at Fenice, so the distractions of the DVD were probably not all that much of a problem for the live audience.

The audience must have overlooked the staging problems. Everything from a musical perspective was enthusiastically received. Florez did an encore of Tonio's nine High c's in "A Mes Ami" and hit all the notes in both performances. Musically it was a great night of theater and it's certain to be a DVD that will be popular for years to come.