Opéra Royal
Gilles ALONSO

Versailles, the sun of Yvelines

Opéra Royal – Donizetti: The Daughter of the Regiment

78000 Versailles

Share on:

Virtuoso soloists Gwendoline Blondeel and Patrick Kabongo, accompanied by the Chœur de l'Armée française, will transport the audience at the Opéra Royal to the beating heart of the French homeland!

In 1840, crowned with exceptional success, Donizetti gave his first opera in French in Paris: La Fille du régiment. King Louis-Philippe had just reopened the gates of Versailles and decided to create a museum dedicated to ‘all the glories of France’. Napoleon is more honoured there than Louis XIV, and France is preparing to welcome the return of the Emperor's ashes with fervour. In other words, patriotism was in full swing, and La Fille du régiment was perfectly in tune. Donizetti had a field day singing the unlikely love story between the vivandière Marie, who had become the regiment's adopted daughter, and the brave Tonio, who had saved the young woman and joined Napoleon's army: patriotic arias and choruses, an assault of bel canto and Tonio's famous aria, the ‘Everest of Lyric Art’ with its nine counter-utes!

The thousandth performance was given in Paris in 1914. During the December 1840 performances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Lily Pons, after a stunning ‘Salut à la France’, sang La Marseillaise, which became a symbol of freedom in the midst of war.

Informations

How to get there?

Versailles, the sun of Yvelines

Opéra Royal

Place d'Armes

78000 Versailles

Y CAR Motorway A13 - Versailles Notre-Dame exit Motorway 186 - Versailles Centre exit Free "Place d'armes" parking from 19:00 BY TRAIN Gare Montparnasse > Gare Versailles Chantiers Dreux, Mantes-la-Jolie, Rambouillet direction Gare St. Lazare > Gare Versailles Rive Droite Rive Droite direction Paris RER C > Gare Versailles Rive Gauche - Château Rive Gauche Château direction Pont de Sèvres - Bus 171 > Versailles Château stop

New windowSee itinerary

The map