Natalie Dessay & Juan Diego Flórez in the Royal Opera's La fille du régiment. Photo, Alistair Muir.

Cute little interview with Juan Diego Flórez and Natalie Dessay about their upcoming Royal Opera House performances of La fille du régiment. (Incidentally, these are the same production and leads coming to the Met next season.) It's Dessay's debut as Marie, and it seems like she's taking her change of voice in stride. Clips of her October Lucia at the Bastille show a increased richness in the lows, but they don't seem to have curtailed her bugaboo screaming technique for the tops. Still, she seems like she's sort of a fun drunk with a reckless streak in real life, which makes her excellent at playing crazy (you've all seen here Ophélie). Watch her pathetic and frightening laughter at the end of the Mad Scene.

Do you think three surgeries on her vocal folds are hindering her career? Node way!

Thompson: You mentioned that your voice has changed recently. I've also seen that you've been open about the surgery you needed to cope with nodules on your vocal cords. Is everything OK now?

Dessay: I hope so. I wanted to be open about this problem because there's a culture of shame around these things among singers, as if it's taboo. My technique wasn't faulty, I didn't do anything wrong, but I still got nodules. In France, we use the expression "to have a cat in your throat" when your voice is sore. So after my surgery, I named my cats "Polyp," "Nodule" and "Cyst" because I was so glad they were outside.

Natalie Dessay and Rolando Villazón in rehearsal for their recital.

And speaking of Dessay and new roles with her new, more mature sound, has anyone heard her Violetta? Probably not, since she's not debuting the role until 2009 at Santa Fe (where, btw, I heard Pat Racette do her first Traviata). However, Natalie did give a little preview—the very first in public—of what to expect from her Violetta in this concert in Paris last year. The cherry on top is Rolando Villazón as her Alfredo. Surprise! I have it for y'ns.

Um...

Oh, and if Covent Garden gets the Vicar of Dibley to play the Duchesse de Crackentorp for their Régiment…

…who's taking it at the Met? I guess I could wish for

or



but really I want it to be