The new production of Verdi’s La Traviata (1853), on display at the Sydney Opera House, is an interesting combination of the glamorous and the downbeat. The set’s stage right annexe is used to demonstrate the role that Violetta Valery (Sophie Salvesani) plays as a pre-paid lover – with some sharp touches that register her capture, anger, and boredom. Thus, the Act 1 prelude opens to find Violetta is in congress with Baron Douhpol, who owns her body and affections, and even produces a sumptuous evening gown for her to wear at the party. For once we see the artefacts (inputs and costs) of being a kept woman.
This party occurs in the main salon of the production – it is cramped but combustible with a suitable display of indoor debauchees. Violetta swirls in and out of the party guests in shimmering gold.
Alfredo Germont (Tomas Dalton) appears in a dappled linen suit, stocky and tall, eager as puppy: hopelessly in love with the courtesan. His clear tenor voice, of admirable size, launches into the “Brindisi” with strong attack, empowered by the thought of pleasing Violetta and his own giddy delight. The ensemble gives this party piece both delicious fizz and weighty declamation, swooning to their own inebriation. The AO chorus are in fine form.
The clarity of singing and acting delivers believable interaction between Violetta and Alfredo in their dissimilar duet, highlighting their fixed and movable personas, as the delicious thrill of being cared for invades Violetta’s thinking, while the pure ardour of Alfredo makes real the delicious pain and delight of being in love: “Croce e delizia”. Salvesani ensures that the skittish nature of her vocalise hides a deeper responsiveness.
The departure of the guests leaves her alone for the great rumination that all coloratura sopranos love and dread (“E Strano, E Strano!”). The clear and powerful voice of Salvesani covered the trajectory and conflicted emotions of the aria and cabaletta. This allowed her to bring great meaning to its intense vocal decoration. She launched the stark jabs of “Follie” with great effect while giving true breadth to Verdi’s expansive melody. The vocal decoration and staccati were adorned with sparkling clarity (“Sempre libera”). This was a memorable assumption that gave us a young Violetta, impetuous and potentially faithful.
Act 2 bought forth great drama as Violetta and the elder Germont (Luke Gabbedy) meet and interrogate each other’s world views. This transfixing exchange, one of the miracles of the Verdian canon, was inhabited with strong vocal and emotional presence by both singers. His towering presence, in deep black, gruff, and confrontational, was gradually washed grey by the honesty of Violetta – though not enough for him to realise that the sacrifice she offers means and end of love and life for her. Each step of the duet was clearly mapped, and the gradations of vocal intensity that Verdi plots were articulated with passion and tenderness. His masculinist assumptions were tempered by the incandescent flame of her love for his son.
The amazing crescendo of “Amami Alfredo”, when Alfredo returns from Paris, was well done, though without finding the extra level of intensity that leaves us exhausted by this heartbreaking confession. Its throbbing power was not fully realised by conductor and singer, but touching, nonetheless. Partly a matter of breath control, rubato, and unanimous dynamic range and surge.
The byplay between father and son, after Violetta’s departure, was handled with naturalistic pathos – plotting a believable physical interchange between the son’s outrage and the pleading father’s bathos. Though the cabaletta at the end of this remarkable scene was cut, the abrupt resolve did allow the production to have its own specially devised interval sprung upon a particular dramatic ellipse.
The second party scene came after interval and the director Sarah Giles introduced some innovations. Instead of choristers and dancers cluttering the tiny stage of the Opera House, the debauchees are backstage, seated, lolling and raucous. They are an inebriated party audience. We watch them watch two dancers who create the fancy dress fortune tellers and mocking matadors (the dancers fill their space with suitable flourish). In this staging, characters break back and forth across the imagined fourth wall, framed by a red curtain.
Violetta’s jagged entry into the party – wrapped up in an enormous glittering bow on her gaudy lollipop gown - was suitably fraught. She was deeply disconsolate – recognising her mistake in coming to the soiree so soon after leaving her lover. The chorus speculations and interactions were deft and darkly fleeting.
The conducting and orchestral playing in the card scene was suitably arresting. The huge ensemble that ends Act 2 lacked a little of the unbearable intensity that Verdi gifts it- the driving energy within a slow pace – but once all the particles of the ensemble were assembled, Paul Fitzsimon drove the inherent schwung and pathos of this scene with admirable control. The divisi strings in the preludes were cleanly and poignantly articulated. This is a pit that responds to its singers.
The commencement of Act 3 juxtaposed the literal unadornment of Violetta by the faithful Annina, from dejected courtesan into the night gowned Violetta on her death bed, again making use of the stage right annexe. If this undercut some of the pathos of the Act 3 prelude, it was deeply true to the director’s intent of uncovering Violetta’s journey and was necessary given the placement of the interval.
The whole last act was rich in vocal and dramatic excellence. Sophie Salvesani distilled the anger and pathos of the dying Violetta, sharp in her knowledge that not even love can delay her ugly death, even as the duet between her an Alfredo (“Parigi o cara”) offered the mirage of ongoing life aways from Paris.
Annina was beautifully curated by Petah Cavallaro, as a young and loving maidservant. As Dr Grenvil, Shane Lowrencev was sombre and solicitous. Both blended well in the final concerted number – as they and we witness the return of Giorgio Germont - which brough forth the crushing realisation that intractable moral codes (seen a duplicitous across the terrain of the opera) had stolen the last shard of happiness from a young woman who loved with profound simplicity.
Richard Anderson as Baron Douphol was suitably macho and misogynistic, while Angela Hogan was in fine dramatic shape as the hostess Flora Bervoix, ably partnered by the boyish Andrew Moran as her lover the Marquis d’Obigny: a couple who have learned to tolerate each other’s sexual escapades. The ever-reliable Virgilio Marino was a dapper panduras (Gastone) in Act 1, introducing Violetta to the love of her life and suitably distressed when Alfredo renounces her at the end of Act 2.
The set design by Charles Davis was arrestingly simple but well focussed on the structural divides inherent in the drama with its two small annexes, main central section, and sliding walls that reconfigured space deftly. The huge garden tree in Act 2 scene 1 was arresting in its autumnal expanse. The costuming (Davis) was luscious and floated stylistically between early and mid-20th century. The staging’s fluidity between art nouveau, art deco and Hollywood 1950s glamour was full of piquant frissons. The lighting by Paul Jackson was suitably poetic.
Whether the body double at the end of the opera, racing in as Violetta expires and departs to another realm, added anything to the power of our response was questionable? In the garden scene, the almost filmic enacting of the second child (Alfredo’s sister) and her beau, backstage, walking near the arresting tree was more tolerable. It was romantic silhouetting, conjured by the impassioned Germont pere as he drives home his moral imperative to save his daughter’s forthcoming favourable marriage.
Overall, this was an apt and poetic reimagining of the opera, highlighting the limited choices that a proud young women might still experience in patriarchal disorder.
Opera Australia, Joan Sutherland Theatre, SOH, Sydney, February 28, 2024
Gar Jones
This party occurs in the main salon of the production – it is cramped but combustible with a suitable display of indoor debauchees. Violetta swirls in and out of the party guests in shimmering gold.
Alfredo Germont (Tomas Dalton) appears in a dappled linen suit, stocky and tall, eager as puppy: hopelessly in love with the courtesan. His clear tenor voice, of admirable size, launches into the “Brindisi” with strong attack, empowered by the thought of pleasing Violetta and his own giddy delight. The ensemble gives this party piece both delicious fizz and weighty declamation, swooning to their own inebriation. The AO chorus are in fine form.
The clarity of singing and acting delivers believable interaction between Violetta and Alfredo in their dissimilar duet, highlighting their fixed and movable personas, as the delicious thrill of being cared for invades Violetta’s thinking, while the pure ardour of Alfredo makes real the delicious pain and delight of being in love: “Croce e delizia”. Salvesani ensures that the skittish nature of her vocalise hides a deeper responsiveness.
The departure of the guests leaves her alone for the great rumination that all coloratura sopranos love and dread (“E Strano, E Strano!”). The clear and powerful voice of Salvesani covered the trajectory and conflicted emotions of the aria and cabaletta. This allowed her to bring great meaning to its intense vocal decoration. She launched the stark jabs of “Follie” with great effect while giving true breadth to Verdi’s expansive melody. The vocal decoration and staccati were adorned with sparkling clarity (“Sempre libera”). This was a memorable assumption that gave us a young Violetta, impetuous and potentially faithful.
Act 2 bought forth great drama as Violetta and the elder Germont (Luke Gabbedy) meet and interrogate each other’s world views. This transfixing exchange, one of the miracles of the Verdian canon, was inhabited with strong vocal and emotional presence by both singers. His towering presence, in deep black, gruff, and confrontational, was gradually washed grey by the honesty of Violetta – though not enough for him to realise that the sacrifice she offers means and end of love and life for her. Each step of the duet was clearly mapped, and the gradations of vocal intensity that Verdi plots were articulated with passion and tenderness. His masculinist assumptions were tempered by the incandescent flame of her love for his son.
The amazing crescendo of “Amami Alfredo”, when Alfredo returns from Paris, was well done, though without finding the extra level of intensity that leaves us exhausted by this heartbreaking confession. Its throbbing power was not fully realised by conductor and singer, but touching, nonetheless. Partly a matter of breath control, rubato, and unanimous dynamic range and surge.
The byplay between father and son, after Violetta’s departure, was handled with naturalistic pathos – plotting a believable physical interchange between the son’s outrage and the pleading father’s bathos. Though the cabaletta at the end of this remarkable scene was cut, the abrupt resolve did allow the production to have its own specially devised interval sprung upon a particular dramatic ellipse.
The second party scene came after interval and the director Sarah Giles introduced some innovations. Instead of choristers and dancers cluttering the tiny stage of the Opera House, the debauchees are backstage, seated, lolling and raucous. They are an inebriated party audience. We watch them watch two dancers who create the fancy dress fortune tellers and mocking matadors (the dancers fill their space with suitable flourish). In this staging, characters break back and forth across the imagined fourth wall, framed by a red curtain.
Violetta’s jagged entry into the party – wrapped up in an enormous glittering bow on her gaudy lollipop gown - was suitably fraught. She was deeply disconsolate – recognising her mistake in coming to the soiree so soon after leaving her lover. The chorus speculations and interactions were deft and darkly fleeting.
The conducting and orchestral playing in the card scene was suitably arresting. The huge ensemble that ends Act 2 lacked a little of the unbearable intensity that Verdi gifts it- the driving energy within a slow pace – but once all the particles of the ensemble were assembled, Paul Fitzsimon drove the inherent schwung and pathos of this scene with admirable control. The divisi strings in the preludes were cleanly and poignantly articulated. This is a pit that responds to its singers.
The commencement of Act 3 juxtaposed the literal unadornment of Violetta by the faithful Annina, from dejected courtesan into the night gowned Violetta on her death bed, again making use of the stage right annexe. If this undercut some of the pathos of the Act 3 prelude, it was deeply true to the director’s intent of uncovering Violetta’s journey and was necessary given the placement of the interval.
The whole last act was rich in vocal and dramatic excellence. Sophie Salvesani distilled the anger and pathos of the dying Violetta, sharp in her knowledge that not even love can delay her ugly death, even as the duet between her an Alfredo (“Parigi o cara”) offered the mirage of ongoing life aways from Paris.
Annina was beautifully curated by Petah Cavallaro, as a young and loving maidservant. As Dr Grenvil, Shane Lowrencev was sombre and solicitous. Both blended well in the final concerted number – as they and we witness the return of Giorgio Germont - which brough forth the crushing realisation that intractable moral codes (seen a duplicitous across the terrain of the opera) had stolen the last shard of happiness from a young woman who loved with profound simplicity.
Richard Anderson as Baron Douphol was suitably macho and misogynistic, while Angela Hogan was in fine dramatic shape as the hostess Flora Bervoix, ably partnered by the boyish Andrew Moran as her lover the Marquis d’Obigny: a couple who have learned to tolerate each other’s sexual escapades. The ever-reliable Virgilio Marino was a dapper panduras (Gastone) in Act 1, introducing Violetta to the love of her life and suitably distressed when Alfredo renounces her at the end of Act 2.
The set design by Charles Davis was arrestingly simple but well focussed on the structural divides inherent in the drama with its two small annexes, main central section, and sliding walls that reconfigured space deftly. The huge garden tree in Act 2 scene 1 was arresting in its autumnal expanse. The costuming (Davis) was luscious and floated stylistically between early and mid-20th century. The staging’s fluidity between art nouveau, art deco and Hollywood 1950s glamour was full of piquant frissons. The lighting by Paul Jackson was suitably poetic.
Whether the body double at the end of the opera, racing in as Violetta expires and departs to another realm, added anything to the power of our response was questionable? In the garden scene, the almost filmic enacting of the second child (Alfredo’s sister) and her beau, backstage, walking near the arresting tree was more tolerable. It was romantic silhouetting, conjured by the impassioned Germont pere as he drives home his moral imperative to save his daughter’s forthcoming favourable marriage.
Overall, this was an apt and poetic reimagining of the opera, highlighting the limited choices that a proud young women might still experience in patriarchal disorder.
Opera Australia, Joan Sutherland Theatre, SOH, Sydney, February 28, 2024
Gar Jones