Donizetti: La Favorite

This is a powerful production of one of Donizett's best operas--the original French version of La Favorite. The cast is outstanding and the updated production works surprisingly well. Especially since there are so few opportunities to see and hear La Favorite, this production is a joy to possess.

I was not impressed by the setting it looked like it was just done in a vacant school room but the cast and the orchestra were first class, the cast worked as well as could be expected with the setting they had to deal with, Elina Garanca was really outstanding, with a better setting she would have been even better as she is not just a fabulous singer but also a magnificent actress, but you can only use what is on hand and she did that superbly, I wasn't impressed with Mariusz Kwiecien, I will avoid him in future, but maybe he was like the rest of the cast doing the best they could with what they had to deal with. The version with Kate Aldrich, Yijie Shi and Ludovic Tezier was much better on the eye as they had a much better set to work on.

This recording is wonderful from a musical point of view. The four leads are in excellent voice and they serve their roles wonderfully. Garanca is, to my mind, is the best mezzo currently performing and it is great to have her in this new role to her repertoire. Polenzani sings with sweetness and elegance. Kwiecien is strong as Alphonse and Mika Kares is a very good basso. I look forward to hearing more of him. The production is annoying. There is much senseless moving and rearranging of chairs, there is basically one set for each locale, the costuming is not flattering, the chorus ambles about, distracting one from the leads, it is dark, boring and with one of the stupidest solutions to ballet music I have ever seen. Kwiecien and Garanca are forced to convince us they are watching a movie (not sure if it is a Western, a horror file, (I don't think it really matters) it just makes Kwiecien look like an idiot having some kind of manic attack. I don't consider any of this mess the performers fault. I blame the director 100% and pity the singers having to work so hard to be credible when they are not acting what they are singing about. My suggestion...Buy the DVD and just play back the audio. It took me 3 nights to watch this in it's entirety. I could only tolerate the stupidity for so long at a stretch.

There is nothing more frustrating than to have great singers in an opera and have their work destroyed by the ghastliness of the production surrounding them. Here we have the magnificent Elina Garanca, the always elegant Matthew Polenzani, and the vigorous Mariusz Kwiecien singing their hearts out in this rarely performed opera, yet the DVD/Blue-Ray is unwatchable because of the cheap, trashy, stupid, offensive, inept staging by the clearly incompetent Amelie Niermeyer. I felt insulted by the intellectual shallowness of everything this director did. From the milling around of cast members, to the constant loud movement of chairs, to the painful overacting asked from the singers, this production was a disgrace. The Femi-Nazi overtones to the storytelling went against the most basic messages of the opera (something that Regie Theatre nutjobs seem to enjoy doing). It mystifies me that one of the world's greatest opera companies is so insistent on filming many of their most Euro-Trashy productions. I am not against new interpretations - - an example of a good one in Munich would be the recent "Die Tote Stadt," which had a modern setting, but also solid coherent storytelling. That production worked very well. This one does not. I urge anyone to avoid the Bavarian "Favorite" at all cost.

I knew some one was going to like this jewel of modern opera production. To me , itis magnifcently sung but the production is hateful and repugnant,and the most repugnant of all is Alfonso's acting. There was no need to present a dying crucified Christ. To me, my faith is very important in the enjoyment of music, specially opera and this production is offensive to Christian values. It was not a surprise to,know that a woman was responsible for this. She seems to hate women and presents a Leonora which is not real. She should have read the history of this woman before giving us such a travesty of the real Leonora. Opera production nowadays has been much badly affected by women producers. Anyway, Donizetti would have hated to see this.

This production of La Favorite is quite annoying. First of all, the chair thing. I thought we had gotten over that. Secondly, the feminist approach: it obliterated what is to me the inherent 'topic' of the work: Like Manon, this is an opera about 'fatal attraction'. It surprises me the stage director did not recognize the obvious parallels. Moreover, it pained me to see the intelligent and talented Mariusz Kwiecien cast as King Alphonse portrayed here as some kind of clown. No, this rendition did not work for me.

I think what money there was went for the singers. What funds were remaining went for the sets, costumes and stagecraft. I think the director did what she could with what she had to work with...although if this were a movie we would have turned it off in the middle. Besides being a nonsensical plot, the direction in places had nothing to do with the story, at other turns was done for shock value, and ultimately was aimless and repugnant.

This is an unfortunate production of a seldom-performed Donizetti opera, one which the composer wrote very quickly. It was reported he wrote the final act in 4 hours. The production from Munich looks like it might have been directed in a similar manner with a minimum of preparation. One wonders if the director even read the libretto because the action bears little resemblance to the story. One scene has Leonora and king Alphonse watching a movie with the flickering light of the projector reflecting on their faces. For the entire opera except for the final act which is in a monastery setting with an altar and folding scrim panels, we see the stage filled with about 50 wooden chairs. That is the extent of the setting. However the singing is very good and the singers do their best to bring life to the melodrama. Under the circumstances the performance is very confusing.