Stacey Alleaume as Violetta and as David
Junghoon Kim Alfredo Picture: Julian Guidera
La traviata
Welsh National Opera
Birmingham Hippodrome
*****
Sir David McVicar’s La Traviata really
is a sumptuous production of Verdi’s tragic love story, everything about
it exudes the wealth and extravagance of 19th century French society in a glorious
version of this well known opera.
First staged in 2009 you wonder if any company
could afford such a lavish production these days with its magnificent
scenery, splendid period costumes and wonderful black drapes (designer
Tanya McCallin). The heavy, ruffled drapes add a sombre air, this is a
tragic tale after all, and frame scenes and even act as stage dividers,
all wonderfully employed by revival director Sarah Crisp.
But a glorious setting for any opera is of
little value if it is not matched by the music and the singing and after
an indifferent start the voices came alive.
Indifferent only that the opera is an
emotionally charged love affair with a tragic end – where would opera
have been without consumption – and the music and excellent singing
might have been telling us about the emotion but we didn’t really feel
it.
Violetta, sung by Australian-Mauritian soprano
Stacey Alleaume, is a courtesan which, if you are not sure, is at the
posh end of a trade providing services to men not available on the NHS.
Mark S Doss Giorgio Germont Stacey
Alleaume Violetta
Her voice is just wonderful, a real joy to
listen to, one of those crystal clear sopranos with each word and note
clear as a bell, a wonderful range and voice that can raise the dead or
soothe a baby whatever the emotions needed.
She is holding a party along with her older
protector Baron Douphol, sung with all the fun of a mortician with gout
by James Cleverton. The script says protector but, lets be honest, she’s
his mistress and he’s such a dour chap his pulling power can only be his
wallet.
Then along comes young Alfredo, sung by
impressive Korean tenor David Junghoon Kim. He is already in love with
Violetta, which cuts out a few scenes of getting to know you for those
audience members with trains to catch.
Violetta is flattered, but initially turns his
proffered love for her down, but the seeds have been sown – and we get
the first inkling all is not well as she feels ill and has a coughing
fit.
After an interval things have changed
dramatically. We are three months on and Violetta and Alfredo are living
together in a country house just outside Paris, where it seems the now
ex-courtesan has been selling off her belongings to pay the bills and
the couple are broke.
Alfredo is devastated when he finds out and
wings it to Paris to earn some cash. The problems are just starting
though as up pops Giorgio Germont, Alfredo’s father, played by the
wonderful bass-baritone Mark S Doss, who’s first career choice was
training as Catholic priest incidentally, and what a loss to opera that
would have been.
He pleads with Violetta to leave Alfredo, not
that he is against the affair of his son and a courtesan, but is
concerned the scandal could threaten his daughter’s prospects of
marriage into a . . . respectable family.
The whole scenario has changed. The emotion was
in the words and music in the first act, but you were only hearing it,
in the second act you started to feel it. The shame and despair of
Alfredo, the terrible dilemma of Violetta, the pleading of Giorgo.
It is all about to go nuclear with Violetta
heading back to the Baron, Alfredo reading her note telling him she has
done a runner and a big party in Paris. Violetta is there, so is the
Baron and up pops a furious, uninvited, and tired and emotional as a
newt Alfredo, feeling rejected, deceived and distraught. He beats the
Baron at cards, flings his winnings at Violetta and gets invited to a
duel. Quite a party.
The emotions are reaching even hearts of stone
by now but death has been waiting in the wings all along and finally we
end months later as the now penniless Violetta is dying, with her only
company her long time companion Annina, sung by Cheshire born soprano
Sian Meinir. The pair are presumably reduced to living, as per opera
tradition, in a Paris garret. Alfredo, who has now been told the noble
reason Violetta left him, arrives along with his father and the lovers are
at last reunited, even if only in death.
Along the way there are also splendid supporting
characters such as Flora sung by Anglo Italian mezzo-soprano Francesca
Saracino and the deep bass of Dr Grenvil, sung by Martin Lloyd,
Verdi’s score is familiar but as an opera it is
not just about the singing, it is a tragic love story, a women who gives
up her own chance of happiness for the good of her lover and someone who
she has not even met. It’s like an early version of Dolly Parton’s I
will Always Love You.
And it only works if the cast don’t just sing it
but make an audience feel it, and to their credit the leads, support and, of
course, the wonderful WNO chorus managed it in spades.
Everything is enhanced by the wonderful set and
telling lighting from Jennifer Tipton and you cannot ignore the glorious
music from the always magnificent WNO orchestra. What we get is opera as
it should be, music to enjoy and a story to feel with voices that touch
the soul. To 11-11-23.
