BY SYLVIE WOODS
La Traviata
Opera Australia
Sydney Opera House, 12 March
What’d you miss?
- Verdi’s wildest party of all
- An unusual interaction during intermission
- The chance to watch all the stage hands doing their thang (and looking super cool)
Monday night was lively at the SOH, last week. Opera Australia ran Verdi’s wildest party of all, La Traviata – ‘The Fallen Woman’. Of course, given all words, names, and titles exceeding two syllables are too large a mouthful for many Australians, the work is known among the kids simply as ‘Trav’.
Trav flopped at its Venice debut in 1853. Giuseppe was probably not too heppy. This was a composer at the height of international success (Rigoletto having been received extraordinarily well two years earlier) and as such, he could take liberties selecting musical subjects. He based Trav on the 1852 play La Dame Aux Camèlias by Alexandre Dumas and entreated Francesco Maria Piave to write the libretto, which worked around that same persona of a charming, witty lady of pleasure. It is said that the original Violetta, a rotund and homely-faced soprano called Fanny Salvini-Donatelli, was too unlikely a courtesan and, for her sins, was laughed offstage. Although Trav was briefly the subject of mockery, Verdi did not despair over the fiasco, writing to a conductor friend, “I do not think that the last word on La Traviata was uttered last night”.
Well, the guy was right.
Conductor Andrea Licata roused the strings delicately and precisely in the iconic overture that prefaces Act I. Instead of the usual curtain-up, scenes were introduced from the centre-outward, which made for an exciting initial revelation to Michael Yeargan’s vivid, bourgeois lounge of claret-red and chocolate aspects. Alfredo is introduced to Violetta by Gastone and the trouble begins. Nicole Car’s breathtaking talent is an international addiction. She is as famous as Fanny Salvini-Donatelli is infamous. Her PR seem to be pushing for her to be embraced as the new Dame J.S., but in truth, Car is in a league of her own. Dame Joan Sutherland and Car are each owed a grand and distinct legacy. Joan is sugar, Car is butter.
The famous drinking-chorus Libiamo ne’lieti calici, which occurs after Gastone has introduced Alfredo to Violetta, was expectedly great fun; then Violetta’s emotionally conflicted Ah, fors’è lui was a robust, impassioned success in Car’s portrayal.
During the first intermission, I interacted with a bewildered Geordie girl who’d purchased tickets in a hurried fuss over the SOH venue glitz.
‘You look normal,’ she said. ‘Are you enjoying this?’ She flipped through the program in disbelief. ‘When I bought the tickets, I expected it would be like High School Musical.’
I know where she’s coming from. Just the other week, I showed up to a swim class I thought was a poolside rave.
‘It’s all in Italian. She exclaimed. ‘Does it get better?’
Indeed, does it get any better than Act I of La Traviata? I told her not to wait around for Zac Efron’s cameo.
The performance went on to delight in every aspect. Anna Dowsley’s giggling moments as Flora Bervoix pioneered the jovial, high-spirited party-atmospheres; John Longmuir was in fine voice and licentious as Gastone and Ji-Min Park, who played Alfredo, demonstrated a wonderful depth to his character – for instance, bursting into that jealous and ungovernable fury-frenzy in Act II before recoiling gingerly and remorsefully.
Director Elijah Moshinsky disrupted the convention of lowering curtains to obscure the Act II major set-change and added it to the performance instead. One busy-and-important looking marshal pointed at things while stage hands tore around looking stressed. It was super cool.
Trav will run until March 27. It boasts a particularly adept cast and is not to be missed.
Image credit Prudence Upton.
