My version of "Daughter of the Regiment"

Well, the opera is over now and it's my day off (Monday, yay!). The pit work was very pleasant, actually; not much to do, but what we did have to do was relatively interesting. I even had a few solos {gasp!} which was a very nice surprise.

I was seated at the edge of the pit closest to the audience and furthest from the edge of the stage (not under the lip of the stage, as much of the orchestra was), so I could actually see some of what was going on. I also was fluent in french at one point, so I could pick up bits and pieces of what was going on from the dialogue. I wasn't wearing my glasses (I only wear them to drive, to the movies, or the theater) so I couldn't read the supertitles. But I came up with my own story line in my head based on what I could see and hear, which was amusing.

Basically, there's this colloratura soprano named Marie, the daughter of some army general and has been adopted by the whole regiment. There's a lot of pomp and miltary hubris which of course translates well into fluffy, marchy, frilly opera choruses. There is much nasal french laughing (honh honh HONH!) and women shrieking as cannons go off in the distance. Marie, being a soprano, has a lot to sing about, and she does so loudly and at the top of her lungs, often singing notes that are surprisingly notes that both dogs and humans can hear.

So Marie eventually carries on extensively about some guy who has saved her life in the war. I'm not sure of the guy's name. Paul (4th horn) and I named him Mickey Mouse because of how he sounded when he was singing really really ultra-high. (Note: Mickey Mouse's part is supposed to be sung by a countertenor, so it is by default stratospherically high. Knowing this, however, doesn't make it sound any more natural or less nasal when you listen to it.)

So anyway, Marie and Mickey Mouse sing a very heartfelt duet together in which they figure out (surprise surprise) that they are both in love with eachother. Somehow, though, something goes wrong. I'm not quite sure what, because I had a lot to play after they fell in love, but it's bad. My theory is that Mickey Mouse started singing way too high as to be physically reasonable, and Marie is concerned that his undies are too tight and pose a threat to his future reproductive health.

So then there is a very sad long aria, during which I had a lot of solos with the english horn, so again, I'm not really all that sure what was going on. It was mostly Marie singing. I postulate that Marie is mourning the loss of all the children she will never have because of Mickey Mouse's insistence on wearing "Nutcracker Panties" in order to sing all of his high notes.

At some point, Marie is told that she is the niece of a larger woman who sings alto. But in the beginning, you get the feeling from the way this larger woman acts that Marie is really her daughter, not her niece. But of course she wouldn't do anything sensible like tell her daughter this, so Marie meets this larger woman thinking she's her aunt. Marie leaves the regiment to become part of her aunt's aristocratic family, much to her dismay. The 2nd act opens with Marie trying to take voice lessons and screaming loud arias in her "aunt's" ear. The "aunt" is dramatically whining that Marie isn't refined and is curses like a sailor from all her years living with the men in the regiment. I enjoyed the cursing part. :)

Now at this point in the opera, I had entire movements that were tacet, and so I took that opportunity to get some major reading done. I finished several magazines and made a dent in a great book I've been reading. So I literally have no idea what happens during this time frame. But at around the time I have to start paying attention and getting ready to come back in, it's clear that Marie's "aunt" has arranged a marriage for her to this Duke of "Crackendooooorrrrrffff" (that's what it sounded like, anyway).

Marie, of course, is still in love with Mickey Mouse, despite his fetish for unusually restrictive undergarments; and the Duke she's supposed to marry is a bumbling idiot who has absolutely no social graces and doesn't even sing at all. (There's a lot of spoken dialogue in this opera.)

Anyway, it all ends happily; the "aunt" finally confesses that Marie is her daughter before it's too late, Marie gets to marry Mickey Mouse who thankfully has traded in his control-top (control-bottom?) thongs for boxers and is singing in a much more reasonable range by the end of the opera. Marie's mother the alto snags a bonus husband as well. Everyone's happy and gets married, which is the typical ending for a comic opera (as opposed to the typical ending for a tragic opera, where everybody dies some horrible and violent death involving long swords, poisons, or huge fires).

So that's my version of the opera. I'm sure it's nowhere near the actual libretto, but it was at least amusing and passed the time quite nicely. ;)

XO Darcy