Adolphe Adam is remembered mainly for his ballet, Giselle. However, in his 32-year career as composer, he focused on the operatic stage, for which he completed 70 works before his death in 1856. Si j'etais Si J'etais Roi (If I were king), an opera comique from 1852, is among his most successful works, and its overture still holds a place on the fringes of the orchestral repertoire. The plot follows the fate of a young 16th-century Goan fisherman who becomes king for a day and eventually overcomes the apparently insurmountable obstacles to the hand as well as the heart of a beautiful princess whose life he saved.
It's tuneful stuff, mostly unmemorable, but with roles for the fisherman, Zephoris, and princess, Nemea, which allow scope for the display of virtuosity and sentiment.
Zephoris in the Wexford Festival production is the Maltese tenor, Joseph Calleja, who reaches his high notes with easy grace, and manages to sound caressing while singing with a force and pressure which quite mask the natural lyricism of his festival debut in 1998.
Nemea, Polish soprano Iwona Hossa, takes a more determinedly virtuosic approach. She negotiates the coloratura with clarity and skill, but, unlike Calleja, doesn't really extend herself beyond the realm of vocal display. There's nothing really affecting in this princess's accomplishments. Dazzling she may be, but charming not at all.
The set designs by Andre Barbe are old-fashioned representational, the costumes by Huguette Barbet-Blanchard pantomime colourful, and the direction of Renaud Doucet of a sometimes guying lightness to match.
With features like the flat cloth in the doorway of Zephoris's hut, painted to look like draped curtains, and painted board elephants wheeled in on a pedestal, this is a production which, visually, wouldn't have seemed out of place in the festival's early years.
David Agler's conducting of the overture has moments of nice languidity, but later matches rather too closely the fundamental blandness of Adam's musical achievement.
