La Traviata is now recognised not merely as one of Verdi’s finest
operas, but one of the lyric theatres greatest music-dramas. It is the
second most performed opera coming a close second to Mozart’s
Magic
Flute in the popularity ratings. No company worth its salt has failed
to put on a production despite the vocal challenges facing the eponymous
heroine and their considerable diversity between the three acts. This being
the case, and with so many quality productions involving leading
interpreters filmed and available on video media, I wonder why this
particular staging and cast should, rather late in the day, have joined the
list.
La Traviata is an opera with many intimate moments as well as
others more grandiose, such as the act one opening party scene and that
concluding act two. Hugo de Ana aims to overcome the challenges of the vast
Verona Arena stage by focusing the action within three large picture-frames
set across the stage. The central and largest of these is the major focus
for the video director and where most of the action involving the principals
happens. In other parts of the opera the outside frames are somewhat
redundant. In act two, the home that Violetta’s financial assets has
provided for the lovers, supposedly a house in the country, looks more like
a chalet on a beachside campsite, whilst that in act three, Violetta’s
bedroom, has the look of a cheap auction room. She doesn’t even have a bed
to lie on; just a packing case among strewn belongings. The costumes are
fin de siècle formal.
In my view Hugo De Ana, who is also responsible for the set design, falls
significantly short in his setting and also too often in the direction of
his soloists. Only in respect of the costumes do his efforts pass muster and
even then there are confusions. The opening prelude has very formally clad
and hatted men and women entering the central frame. This is perhaps a
flash-forward to Violetta’s funeral cortege, as they appear to be rubbishing
large paper adverts for
La Traviata. They become the first dancers
at the opening party where they are joined by more appropriately and
colourfully attired participants. Confusion in style extends to act two
where Alfredo is dressed in jeans and open neck, whilst Annina and Violetta
continue to be dressed more in fin de siècle period. The tennis racquet
Alfredo carries would have suited Bill Tilden or Henri Cochet at Wimbledon
in 1925.
Whatever inappropriateness is evident in the costumes is as nothing
compared with that of the singing of the two lovers. Bluntly, the Alfredo of
Francesco Demuro has barely the voice to fill a moderately sized theatre let
alone the space of the Verona Arena. The vocal strain is all too evident in
CHs.13-14 and later where he squeezes the ends of the phrase in an ugly
manner (CHs. 34-35). His acting is little better; rather than look at
Violetta he addresses the arena audience or the back wall of the Roman
amphitheatre. As his lover, Ermonela Jaho starts with a most pronounced
vibrato (CH.3). Her tone is too fulsome for the act one coloratura but she
expresses the meaning of words even if pitch values stray. Overall her
acting is good throughout. In act three she comes into her own in respect of
both vocal and acted performance. Her
Addio del passatto (CH. 40)
is particularly effective with the words well stressed and pointed. In this
act she is made up to look like death itself, a little over the top. Neither
Alfredo nor her father would have given her half a chance of seeing the day
out, let alone hoping for more. Make-up is also a problem with Vladimir
Stoyanov’s Germont. The way the lighting falls on his upper face it looks as
though he is some kind of Mephisto figure who has strayed in from Gounod’s
Faust or Berlioz. He at least has the vocal wherewithal for his
role, albeit even he fails to put much character into the part. He is much
as he is in the Tutto Verdi performance from Parma in 2008 (
review), strong voiced but without much tonal
variation.
On the podium, Julian Kovatchev’s tempi vary from the over-heated to the
languid without justification that I could see. The minor parts are
adequately sung with the Annina of Serena Gamberoni being among the best.
There are several cuts to cabalettas as seems to be the habit these days in
what is not a long opera. Performances of this second most popular of operas
should be graced by all the music Verdi composed for its triumphal second
staging in Venice.
Appendix - La Traviata
- The most popular of Verdi’s operas
The success of
Rigoletto assured Verdi’s fame in Italy and around
the world. It was his seventeenth opera. Verdi could, both artistically and
financially, have afforded to relax, Giuseppina, his partner and later wife,
appealed to him to do so. However, his artistic drive allowed no such
luxury. During the composition of
Il Trovatore in 1852, which at
that stage had no agreed theatre or date for its production, Verdi agreed to
present an opera at Venice’s La Fenice in March of the following year, 1853.
When he eventually settled on the premiere of
Il Trovatore taking
place in Rome it was delayed by the death of its librettist. The upshot was
that at least the first act of
La Traviata was composed
contemporaneously with the later portions of
Il Trovatore, the two
operas being wholly different in musical mood, key register and patina. To
add to the pressures on Verdi, he ended up having only six weeks between the
premieres of the two diverse operas.
Whilst on a visit to Paris Verdi had seen and been impressed by the
younger Alexander Dumas’s semi-autobiographical play
La Dame aux
Caméllias based on the 1848 novel of the same name which was based on
the author’s own experiences. The subject appealed to Verdi but he
recognised that it might have problems with the Venetian censors. Even
before the choice of subject was made it had been decided that Piave,
resident in Venice, was to be the librettist for the new opera for the
Teatro La Fenice. Verdi put off the choice of subject until the preceding
autumn, constantly worrying the theatre about the suitability of the
available singers. The theatre in its turn wanted to get the censors'
approval of the subject to satisfy their own peace of mind. Piave produced
at least one libretto that Verdi turned down before he finally selected the
Dumas play.
La Traviata was his nineteenth opera and the most
contemporary subject he ever set, embattled as he constantly was by the
restrictions of the censors, something that Puccini and the later verismo
composers never had to face.
Having spent the winter worrying about the suitability of the soprano
scheduled to sing the consumptive Violetta, Verdi was also upset that the La
Fenice decided to set his contemporary subject in an earlier period thus
losing the immediacy and relevance that he intended for the audience. Verdi
was correct in worrying about the censors and the whole project was nearly
called off when they objected. As to the singers, all went well at the start
and at the end of act I, with its florid coloratura for the eponymous
soprano, Verdi was called to the stage. The audience was less sympathetic to
the portly soprano portraying a dying consumptive in the last act and
laughed loudly. The tenor singing Alfredo was poor and the baritone Varesi,
who had created both the roles of Macbeth and Rigoletto, considered Germont
below his dignity and made little effort. Verdi himself considered the
premiere a fiasco. He did, however, compliment the players of the orchestra
who had realised his beautifully expressive writing for strings, not least
in the preludes to acts 1 (Ch.2) and 3 (Ch.37). Although other theatres
wished to stage
La Traviata, Verdi withdrew the opera until he was
satisfied that any theatre concerned would cast the three principal roles,
and particularly the soprano, for both vocal and acting ability. The
administrator of Venice’s smaller San Benedetto theatre undertook to meet
Verdi’s demands. He promised as many rehearsals as the composer wanted and
to present the opera with the same staging and costumes as at the La Fenice
premiere. Verdi revised five numbers in the score and on 6 May 1854
La
Traviata was acclaimed with wild enthusiasm in the same city where it
had earlier been a fiasco. Verdi was well pleased with the success but
particularly the circumstances and location.
The role of Violetta in Verdi’s opera is by no means easy. The American
diva Renée Fleming, reigning queen of the Metropolitan Opera, contends it is
the perfect role in the entire soprano lexicon and that by which most
sopranos have, historically, been measured. She suggests each act requires a
different voice, passing from the coloratura of the first through the lyric
emotion of the second to a more dramatic voice for the traumatic third act.
The story of
La Traviata is both stark and bleak and not that
unusual in the demi-monde of France’s Second Empire. A young woman uses her
beauty to earn a living. She lifts herself from the overcrowded squalor of
her childhood into a socially more affluent and elegant milieu by making
herself sexually available to the highest bidder. She has brought from her
earlier life and living conditions the disease of tuberculosis. She knows
she has the disease and what the inevitable outcome will be; it’s a question
of when not if, and if that is not enough she recognises that it will end
with her back where she started, in abject poverty. The singer of the role
must be capable of encompassing Verdi’s demands histrionically as well as
vocally. A big challenge indeed, perhaps met most famously by Maria Callas
at La Scala in 1955 directed by Visconti. Renée Fleming in Los Angeles
alongside Villazon and Bruson (
review) and at Covent Garden in 2009 with Calleja and
Hampson (see
review) gives noteworthy vocal and acted
portrayals. Other distinguished assumptions have been by Angela Gheorghiu at
Covent Garden in 1994 (Decca DVD 074 390) and in 2007 at La Scala, the
latter in a most sumptuously costumed and staged performance (Arthaus Musik
Blu-Ray 101 342). These have made it onto the visual media and all have
virtues. Anna Netrebko, alongside an athletic Villazon, are excellent in
Willie Decker’s imaginative production in updated costumes seen at Salzburg
in 2005 (
review). This staging is now available in Blu-Ray format
as part of a reduced price triple issue including
La Bohème and
The Marriage of Figaro, all involving Anna Netrebko and recorded
live at the Salzburg Festival. I will review this collection shortly on this
site.
Robert J Farr
