IT has been 16 years since Scottish Opera premiered this production of Verdi’s masterpiece La traviata (“The Fallen Woman”), directed by Sir David McVicar at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal.
Boasting a universally impressive cast, led by the exceptional South Korean soprano Hye-Youn Lee and her compatriot tenor Ji-Min Park, this revival is an undoubted triumph.
Verdi’s opera premiered in Venice in 1853, some 43 years before Puccini’s La bohème. Interestingly, both operas are based upon works of French literature (Alexandre Dumas’s La Dame aux camellias and Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème, respectively).
Moreover, both are set in Paris and focused upon the tragic consequences of tuberculosis. However, it is the earlier opera that proved most controversial.
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Unlike Dumas’s novel (which is nowadays considered to be something of a moral treatise promoting “family values”), Verdi’s opera strikes a note of sympathy with its titular protagonist, the courtesan Violetta Valéry.
Indeed, the work’s morally loaded title, La Traviata, is believed to have been forced upon Verdi (who is said to have preferred “Love and Death” or, simply, “Violetta”). McVicar’s production stands unambiguously on the side of Verdi.
Designer Tanya McCallin’s set is impressively hyper-real and intelligently intimate, when required. Dominated by a black that is simultaneously premonitory and opulent, her stage designs are revealed by a voluminous black curtain that speaks to a bygone era of luxurious drapery.
As, seemingly recovered from a serious illness, Violetta throws an extravagant party, the production’s angular distance from theatrical naturalism is underlined by the floor of the apartment. Here, etched in jet black, is large, exquisite lettering that appears to represent fragments of a party invitation or, perhaps, a tombstone.
The limitations of dramatic realism thus dispensed with, McVicar and McCallin transform the stage into a crucible of social hypocrisy and high stakes passion. Well-heeled gentlemen slide on their knees, proffering handfuls of cash to “gypsy” women who are there for their entertainment.
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Private decadence and social propriety combine easily in this company. By contrast, young lover Alfredo Germont (Park) seeks to persuade Violetta (Lee) to abandon her world of appearances for one of real love and devotion.
The two lead singers perform their roles with an affecting combination of passion and pathos, bringing to their characters an emotive, vocal expression that fills the auditorium. This is as true of Violetta’s initial succumbing to Alfredo’s wooing as it is of the unfortunate Alfredo’s suffering under the deceit (forced upon Violetta by moral blackmail) that his beloved has turned her back on him.
Among the superb supporting cast, baritone Phillip Rhodes shines as Alfredo’s father, the wretched blackmailer Giorgio Germont. The New Zealander is every inch the symbol of a French bourgeois morality that, while seemingly upright, is degraded and duplicitous.
The orchestra of Scottish Opera, under the baton of Stuart Stratford, performs Verdi’s famous score with all the necessary heft and nuance. Dynamic, intelligent and emotionally scintillating, this seems sure to be a celebrated revival.
At Theatre Royal, Glasgow until May 18, then touring until June 15: scottishopera.org.uk.
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