LA DAME DE MONTE-CARLO (Royal Opera)****

 

By Emma

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-RFhLrnH6I

Available until: 24^th November 2020

This is actually a sung monologue for soprano and orchestra but here it is performed with a pianist and staged. It is often performed alongside La voix humaine (which Welsh National Opera has filmed as part of lockdown) and was written for the same soprano.

It works really well as a staged opera. It is directed by Franciska Ery and it is filmed in different parts of the Royal Opera House including the Floral Hall and the main stage. It is supposed to be about an older woman in a casino who is addicted to gambling and lost all her money but my French isn’t very good so I kind of imagined it as an aspiring singer (and not a very old one) who is refusing to leave the Royal Opera House. But I think the basic emotional story is similar.

Alexandra Lowe is the soprano. She sings Poulenc’s music really beautifully and acts really well too. She is glamorous and behaves in quite a confident, impulsive way but at the same time there is a lot of sadness in her performance. The way the character behaves could be embarrassing to watch but Alexandra has so much presence, the kind of person you can’t help watching and admiring, even when they are doing something they probably shouldn’t.

There is another character, a barman, played by Michael Papadopolous. He is actually a conductor an repitateur who is on the Jette Parker Young Artist Programme with Alexandra but he is a very talented actor too. He looks so uncomfortable and awkward about Alexandra’s character’s dramatic behaviour, just like an employee at a casino or the ROH would be.

The pianist is Michael Sikich, who is also a Jette Parker Young Artist. He is really good and I don’t think you’d guess the work was written for an orchestra, it works so well with a piano. It is also very easy to imagine a pianist in either a casino or the Floral Hall at the Royal Opera House so he’s not just an accompanist, he becomes part of the opera.

I think this works really well as a staged work and it is a great idea to showcase various different Young Artists in solo works. It puts more of a spotlight on them and puts less people in danger.