A student’s kiss sparked it off. The passion is indescribable, sings Magda (Verity Wingate), her soprano, exquisitely sung. Rather special. She’s a courtesan, kept by the banker Ramboldo, powerful bass Andrei Bondarenko. He’s given Magda an expensive pearl necklace. She’s a bought woman. Yet Magda’s believes in romantic love. A contradiction pointed out by the poet Prunier (Robert Bartneck), a free thinker.

In Act 1’s Parisian salon, Prunier begins a song about a girl dreaming of a king’s proposal. Magda’s second verse improvises, how the girl falls in love with a student. Magda’s aria Che il bel sogno di Doretto sings of her own experience meeting Ruggero.

Don’t ridicule me! Rambaldo a ruthless figure, in svelte, smooth velvet jacket. You know the answer, nothing’s changed. Lisette (Julia Koci, at short notice), Magda’s maid sings, he was here seven times, Ruggero, the son of Ramboldo’s old friend.

No complaints about the late 19th Century, fin-de-siecle, costumes, (van Beek’s) gorgeous, frilly frocks, or the bouquets of flowers bedecking Volksoper’s handsome sets (Christof Hetzer), in Lotte de Beer’s production. It was an age of aestheticism.
Magda, lost in memories, dreams of love blossoming. She sings, Wingate’s soprano in a Proustian reverie, how they were excited, dancing. And he Ruggero ordered a beer, paid and tipped generously. How they wrote their names on the marble table top, they sing. ‘Love is blossomed, guard your heart.’

Ruggero begs to excuse his lateness. But Korean tenor, David Junghoon Kim, swamped in a great coat, is he really Magda’s lover? The sun and moon coinciding are bad omens. How does a young man have fun, asks Magda’s protector Rambaldo. Lisette raises her feather duster- on a long pole- in an expansive movement. Prunier wants to read Magda’s hand: ‘her life could be as beautiful as a swallow in the sun.‘. But there are dark clouds looming.
Magda goes to a club on her own. Now with Ruggero, apologises she missed him. In their duet, they’re different from the others, who smile and dance to familiar music. But Junghoon Kim, though an accomplished tenor, tends to get over-emotional, declamatory, physically demonstrative.

The stage set for the Buhler Club is very effective, the dancing couples float by on the rotating circular stage. ‘A single kiss lights our life,’ sing Volksoper’s chorus. Back of stage, Go-Go dancers are doing the Can-can in black skirts, slit-legs opening out to show white lace inserts. Front of stage, clowns, circus acts, and vaudeville performers. Terrific chorus.

Magda enters in disguise, besieged by young men, but rejects them for her ‘date’, Ruggero sitting alone at a table. They dance, talk. In the plot, Lisette and Prunier enter, Kocci’s Lisette pretending not to recognise her mistress, in this ‘love quartet’. He is in love with one woman, Ruggero proclaims, and will be forever. Kim is (more than) adequate, but nothing to shake the firmament, rather over-effusive. But the Act 2 highlight is Bevo al tuo fresco sorriso, I drink to your your smile, your lips that uttered my name; the concertato, irresistibly catchy, they all join in.
(Wingate’s) Magda sings movingly, torn between love and remorse.-… To what is this leading? Bartneck’s poet, in this post-modern construct, is ‘writing a libretto’…
Rambaldo enters, and bullying, locks Magda’s arm. This is what it is to be a kept woman. He hopes she doesn’t regret it (her escapade.) The intoxication will dissolve in the morning light. Magda sings, she’s scared, she’s so happy!

For Act 3, months later, on the Cote d’Azure, the stage is all in white. A blown-up projection of a blue sea-scape. ‘With you life is an endless ecstasy’. Unfortunately, the light-coloured suit Kim’s wearing does nothing for his figure. Sorry!

‘You wrote to him, asking him for money to pay the bills?’… It’s all his fault. The bottom-line is he’s broke, dependent on hand-outs from mum and dad. She doesn’t know what to say. – But for him, ‘it’s all been said. We’ll love each other forever.’ She looks distraught. But he, (youthful idealist) sings, ‘And now I know you are my lover, and love itself.’ Quite a beautiful aria :’the light of our love will dissolve the shadows’, radiantly sung by Kim’s Ruggero. Who knows, Que ca?– Children with ice-creams wander across the stage. What is she supposed to do? Keep silent? The truth will destroy all their happiness.

Now, unbelievably, Lisette and Prunier, in their period BATHING costumes amble across the stage. It’s almost comic. He’s in bright red/ white striped all-in-one costume. Not very flattering! But Puccini’s music is beautiful, sumptuous. The city of Nice is theirs…Lovers can escape in this oasis, Prunier (Bartneck) sings. A black man in black liveried uniform is at their service. She Lisette reproaches Prunier, ‘Are you pouting around again. You’ve destroyed my dream!’
Magda now arrives in a sophisticated, shimmering, light-blue gown. ‘You need opulence to bury your love in,’ she sings. She’s used to the good life, he can’t provide.

Lisette, back in her servant’s uniform, nonchalantly flicks her long duster, like a wand. And picks up the silver service. When are you free tonight? Some holidaymakers cross their beach-like stage. Ruggero, to Magda, ‘Sit close’, reading his mother’s letter, ‘Son, you wrote a woman has touched your heart.’ (Magda is moved to tears.) ‘If you are sure she is virtuous...Bless you.’ She awaits his reply.

Magda’s upset. ‘The past is irrevocable.’ SO SHE CANNOT MARRY HIM! Terrific, powerful scene, out of all the dross. Her agony is killing her. But it must be!…She’s leaving him because she loves him! The stage is strewn with white paper, like wallpaper strips. Please don’t break my heart!

In their duet, ‘Fate demands that we end this.’ (Yet he dares to sing, remember that I made this sacrifice for you!) But she sings, tells him, like a mother to a child, once you calm down, remember my advice….Say nothing! High caliber Puccini, this scene.

The ending is ambiguous. Her sinful body is beyond saving, she sings. There’s an oblique reference to suicide, perhaps suggested in Prunier’s singing of the swallow falling from the sky.

Puccini’s La Rondine is ‘modernist’; episodic; fragmentary. Puccini’s commission was for a ‘Viennese operetta’. But Puccini wanted no operetta with spoken text, but a fully composed work. The form became an opera, but ‘the piece had the scent of Viennese operetta’, (Volksoper’s program notes.)
Volksoper’s production impressed with surprisingly classy sets, the cast was uniformly good, Wingrove in the title role a revelation, Bondarenko’s Rambaldi especially impressive. Conductor Wogerer elicited a lush opulence from the strings, Volksoper orchestra justifying Puccini’s richly detailed score. © PR.10.03.2025
Photos: Verity Wingate (Magda); Volksoper Ensemble; Rebecca Nelsen (Lisette),Timothy Fallon (Prunier); Verity Wingate (Magda), David Junghoon Kim (Ruggero).Featured Image: Aaron Pendleton, Timothy Fallon, Johanna Arrouas, Matilda Sterby © All photos © Barbara Pálffy/ Volksoper Wien