In Praise of Opera’s Comic Heroines

Recently I enjoyed a cinema streaming of the Royal Opera House’s ‘L’Elisir D’Amore’.  I didn’t intend to review it, but while watching I realised that Adina is a very good example of the independent, decisive operatic heroine who utterly disproves the currently popular notion that opera portrays women as victims. Donizetti’s Adina is never less than her own woman: she sees through false literary depictions of love and understands clearly what’s on offer in a male-dominated society for an intelligent woman. And, like Jane Austen’s Emma, she finds financial independence is a help too! The opera takes place in a gossipy, generally genial society, which observes and finally facilitates the love-match between her and Nemorino. In Paul Higgins’ vivid revival of Laurence Pelly’s 2007 production with terrific singing and playing under Sestro Quatrini’s conducting, this performance dances all the way to its happy ending.  When considering the role of women in opera, why do we always think of the tragedies?  Operatic comedies give us heroines who thrive and connive, manipulate and collaborate, and understand how to use their own power. 

Charlotte Higgins’ 2016 article for the Guardian ‘Is opera the most misogynistic art form?’ is a well-written exposition of the ‘woman as victim’ theory. Higgins mainly sticks to the usual suspects, Aida, Carmen, Norma, Violetta, Mimi, Cio-Cio San – women stabbed, entombed, set alight or tubercular. Whether their deaths occur by the direct action of a man or bad luck, the message is clear, opera seeks to destroy women. (Higgins, incidentally, is a witty arts writer who is partial to comedy as her monthly round-up of the Archers testifies.)  She mentions comic operas near the end of the essay but only to look at the women singers playing men – trouser roles – in Mozart and Handel operas.

Higgins writes about her early experiences of seeing women die in opera, their poor life outcomes matched only by the pathos of Shakespeare’s Ophelia.  I feel fortunate that the early stage works I saw at Kirkcaldy’s Adam Smith Centre, were Gilbert and Sullivan operettas – and am reminded how much Sullivan owed to Donizetti in his orchestration and the chorus writing.  True, not all the G&S heroines made their own luck, but the support offered by cousins and aunts, fellow school-maids and Major General’s daughters certainly helped them along.  Among their creations were the contralto roles for single older women, Katisha in whom Koko found “beauty in the bellow of the blast”, Buttercup, the Pirate Nurse, Ruth, whose guile, fortitude and ability to keep secrets enabled them to make their way in a hostile world. Their literary ancestress is perhaps Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. In the same venue the other local amateur company presented 20th century musicals with independent heroines like Annie Oakley, prepared to state that anything a man can do she “can do better,” and Nellie Frobisher who’ll gladly “wash that man right out of her hair.” I was also lucky that the first Shakespeare play I saw on stage was ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor.’

But to return to Donizetti.  ‘L’Elisir d’Amore’ was put together in around a month by the composer, working in collaboration with Felice Romani, a librettist very much in demand in the 1830s. To save time, the text was based on an earlier libretto about a love potion.  From the beginning we’re in no doubt that all elixirs are fake – Adina is first seen reading ‘Tristan and Isolde,’ so ridiculous it makes her laugh, and she wastes no time in telling the villagers and Nemorino about it.  But maybe not all of them understand that she’s joking.  Adina, the object of the simple Nemorino’s affections is well aware that she needs no artificial potions – she’s confident in her own powers of persuasion to attract men - and soon Belcore, the army captain comes running. The stuff of romcoms you may be thinking, and of course stock characters and situations are very much part of comic writing of all kinds.  It would be a hard heart that isn’t swayed by the lovely music and in the Royal Opera House’s production we have bel canto singing of the highest class – US soprano, Nadine Sierra, making her house debut, has a pinpoint technique, and her extravagant coloratura is entirely appropriate for the flirtatious Adina, who’s a bit of a show-off.  Liparit Bavetisan’s melting tenor which compares his love to the river’s compulsion to flow to the sea, is also the voice of the tongue-tied clumsy youth. And so the elixir arrives when quack Doctor Dulcamara appears in his caravan. I saw Bryn Terfel at Covent Garden in this role in an earlier revival of the production – he’s also in the current one but Ambrogio Maestri has replaced him for the streamed performance.  He does a superb turn as the larger than life figure who lives off his wits, and is, in all senses light on his feet – his second-half duet with Adina is a musical and comic delight, as she flirts outrageously to show that her charms need no artificial aids.

The other villagers are more gullible, queueing to buy Dulcamara’s remedies in the first and second Acts.  Comic heroines are as exceptional as tragic ones.  Adina is the smartest person around, can try out different lovers as an enjoyable pastime, but realises that monogamy with the best of the bunch is a pretty good option too. Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s comic story ‘Smeddum’ comes to mind: most of Meg Menzies’ feckless children need the rigour of marriage vows to keep them on the straight and narrow, but the exceptional one, Kath, can take her time to make up her mind.  She has smeddum, roughly defined as mettle or spirit or maybe gumption – not romantic terms, but appropriate for the heroine of this and other comic operas.

Donizetti’s Marie in ‘La Fille du Regiment’ has plenty of spirit.  Not often performed, the tale of the orphan found on a battlefield and brought up by the regiment was one of the first streams I watched in lockdown streams.  Marie, despite her good fortune and her love for her “fathers”, leads the life of a skivvy and Tonio, another simple chap like Nemorino, is her escape.  With stunning roles for the tenor (numerous high Cs) and a coloratura soprano, this Met performance by Juan Diego Florez and Natalie Dessay is well-worth seeking out, as is the classic recording by Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland.

We currently have the chance to see another sparky heroine, Rosina, in Scottish Opera’s ‘The Barber of Seville.’  Her initial situation isn’t promising – trapped by a guardian who wishes to marry her - but as soon as she sees her chance with Lindoro, she proves adept at getting her own way.  Famously in 2010, Joyce DiDonato, playing Rosina at the Royal Opera House, broke her leg during a performance, and played out the run in a wheelchair.  As her bright costume in Laurence Pelly’s production was fuchsia and lime green, she was given a pink stookie to match. The raised stage-set made her wheelchair difficult to manoeuvre, and some critics saw it as an apt symbol of her imprisonment.  Lindoro, the count in disguise, is, as Donal Hurley points out in his review this week, a more worthy hero than the raddled figure he’s become by ‘The Marriage of Figaro.’ Despite being locked up, Rosina is determined that he’ll be hers, and, in her aria “una voce poco fa”, she sings that she’s willing to be “sweet and loving” - but she’ll show her guardian her “viperish” side if she doesn’t get her own way.  She’s a willing accomplice in the witty music lesson and is inventive in planning her escape.

Rossini’s Cinderella, Angelina, in ‘La Cenerentola,’ also has help in getting away from drudgery, but the key to her success with the Prince – another hero in disguise - is her kindness, celebrated by an awe-inspiring final aria in which she rejoices in her sudden change of fortune and forgives her very nasty father and sisters. Tragic heroines tend to have their big arias early on, and we’re left only with their dying gasps, but a bonus with these comic heroines is that they often have the last word. Elena in Rossini’s ‘The Lady in the Lake’ (strictly an opera seria rather than a comic opera) declines the love of the Scottish King in his alter ego as Umberto, but uses his help to rescue her lover, Malcolm.  She has an equally good, though less well known final aria, “tanti affetti”.

Joan Sutherland’s Marie in ‘La Fille du Regiment’ excelled in a relatively rare comic role for her, and Maria Callas too is worth hearing both in ‘The Barber of Seville,’ and in her less well-known role in ‘Il Turco in Italia.’  Unusually for a Rossini heroine, Fiorella is married but doesn’t let that hold her back.  Not content with meeting her new love interest, the Turk, Selim, behind her elderly husband Geronio’s back, she tells her spouse he’ll have to get used to it. The complete recording from 1955 is on YouTube here and 51 minutes in you’ll find the duet between Callas and bass Franco Calabrese, (both the same age, 33, at the time) in which Fiorella tells her husband just that, but then he tries to lay down the law…  If you want proof that that the comic heroine knows how to assert herself it’s all in Callas’ acting and singing here – no translation required! It’s also extremely funny as she sends up her own tragic style, with audible sobs as she pretends remorse. Callas wasn’t a natural comedienne, but she responded to Visconti’s direction in the stage production of Il Turco, in a way she was never to do again – her stage Rosina was reportedly a much chillier performance.

I had hoped to finish by recommending a modern production of ‘Il Turco’.  Sadly, this summer’s performance from the Aix Festival currently available on Operavision begins well but becomes the victim of the director’s concept.  Hugh Kerr reports that Vienna’s ‘Barber of Seville’ suffered a similar fate.  So enjoy Scottish Opera’s ‘Barber’ – and celebrate another victory for the resourceful comic heroine!