Director, Richard Eyre, Designer, Bob Crowley; Conductor, Antonello Manacorda; Violetta, Lisette Oropesa; Alfredo, Liparit Avetisyan; Germont, Christian Gerhaher
This was the first ‘live’ Traviata I’ve been to since the one at Covent Garden in the 70’s when Ileana Cotrubas was Violetta in a new production, though I did see a film of the current ROHCG production ‘live’ in 2019 (see blog around early 2019).
The sets and production are at the service of the music and drama, and, in a good sense, don’t get in the way, with period, glamorous costumes and a required bit of spectacle in the gambling/ballet scene. The only set I would question would be the one for the last Act, where Violetta’s bedroom simply looks too big, and a more confined space would have aided the sense of illness and oppression (it was also in this act that there was a rare technical glitch, with the lights coming on to represent sunshine before the blinds were open!)
I always, as I have said elsewhere, always been a bit disdainful of Traviata, as being sentimental and full of too much ‘oompah’ music and trite tunes. This is silly, I know……however I felt particularly stupid as I listened to Antonello Manacordo’s reading of the score, which was taut, exciting, beautiful when it needed to be, and very well phrased. The ROHCG orchestra sounded excellent. There was one point – I can’t remember whether in the gambling scene or the last act – when Manacordo almost made the coming together of Alfredo and Violetta sound like Tristan, such was the intensity of the playing!!
This work depends crucially on the ability of the singer playing Violetta to be a credible actor, to project a whole range of emotions, characterising aspects of the role through her voice in two hours and 10 minutes of almost constant on-stage presence, and to have the vocal ability, stamina and technique to deal with the coloratura elements of the role. I wasn’t originally going to go to Traviata at all but as soon as I heard Lisette Oropesa as Gilda in Rigoletto (see blog) I raced to the ROHCG website and bought just about the last decent ticket in the Amphitheatre, foregoing an evening of Shostakovitch string quartets at Milton Court. Lisa Oropesa was – no other language will do – stunning as Violetta. She has a totally confident technique which allows her to produce stunning top notes (as in Sempre Libre), coloratura runs, and an immense variation of volume, vocal colour and tone. Her intrinsic vocal sound is beautiful – a sort of smoky sound, if that makes sense. She projects the words well and acts very convincingly. This is one of the finest, all-round, operatic performances I have ever seen – the sort of performance that gives some confident backing to my feeling that, at its best, there’s no other art form that can beat opera
Liparit Avetisyan as Alfredo had also been in Rigoletto with Oropesa earlier in the season. I was much more impressed with him here than in the former work. Though he is a bit stolid on stage and doesn’t particularly project much of anything (possibly a fault in Verdi’s characterisation?) he offered us some sensitive soft singing – altogether more varied than when he was the Duke of Mantua. There’s been a lot of critical discussion about Christian Gerhaher’s Germont, with some feeling he produced singing that was unidiomatic, and ‘choppy’, un-legato-like. For, me this was simply his representing the pent-up fury of an elderly gentleman seeing his ambitions for his family collapsing around him, and I thought it worked well – his singing of some phrases was very lovely.
All in all – much to my surprise – a great evening!!
John's musical journey 