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La Traviata

“Best of all vocally is Gerald Finley, singing Germont for the first time and making his misguided cruelty sound mellifluous…” Erica Jeal, The Guardian

Composer	Giuseppe Verdi
Libretto	Piave after Dumas fils
Venue and Dates	Royal Opera House, London 29, 31 January, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15 19 February 2005
Conductor	Maurizio Benini
Production	Director: Patrick Young (revival of 1994 production by Richard Eyre) Sets: Bob Crowley

Performers	Alfredo: Joseph Calleja / Charles Castronovo Violetta: Norah Amsellem / Ana Maria Martinez Giorgio Germont: Anthony Michaels-Moore / Gerald Finley Annina: Gillian Knight Baron Douphol: Darren Jeffery Flora: Liora Grodnikaite
Notes	Role debut for Gerry

What the critics say

Erica Jeal for The Guardian, January 31, 2005

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,,1402169,00.html

Three stars out of five

The box office doesn't lie, but it's hard to fathom why La Traviata is still so popular. It has become the classic operatic weepy, despite there being more abundant good tunes and more moving drama elsewhere in Verdi's output. And its plot hinges on the all-importance of a set of social mores that today can seem distant. It's a rare performance that can make us understand not only why Violetta is doomed, but also why she accepts it.

Previous revivals of Richard Eyre's 1994 production might have managed it. If this one, prepared once again by Patrick Young, doesn't quite, it's because none of the relationships between the three main characters - the reformed courtesan, her lover and his father - is drawn with as much complexity as it could be.

Violetta is the French soprano Norah Amsellem. In her first-act showpiece aria, her vocal athleticism compensates for the odd imprecise high note. However, the main weapon in her musical arsenal is a gossamer pianissimo, tiny yet intense. This serves her well in her hushed decision to leave Alfredo and in her despairing last-act aria. But when she veils her tone she also veils her words, and this doesn't help a characterisation that, after the upbeat first act, offers few reminders of Violetta's independent spirit.

Her Alfredo is sleek, dapper Charles Castronovo, who bears more than a passing resemblance to the young Verdi and sings with a nicely rounded, supple tenor just big enough for the theatre. Best of all vocally is Gerald Finley, singing Germont for the first time and making his misguided cruelty sound mellifluous, though his dramatic presence registers unusually low for this singer.

Maurizio Benini conducts carefully, his attention to balance and detail paying off in vivid support for the drama's pivotal moments. Bob Crowley's designs - especially the sumptuous trompe l'oeil set for Flora's party - look good in Jean Kalman's warm lighting. But still, those tears dry up as soon as the house lights go on.

Andrew Clark, Financial Times, 1 February 1 2005

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2c835fcc-73f8-11d9-b705-00000e2511c8.html

Verdi demanded three qualities for his "fallen woman": looks, anima (soul) and a good stage presence. What he did not want was a glossy prima donna. The part broke convention not just histrionically, in its depiction of a contemporary prostitute, but also vocally. It needs a soprano agile enough to throw off the Act 1 coloratura, and strong enough to meet the dramatic requirements of Acts 2 and 3. That's asking a lot, and most sopranos fall short. So it was fascinating, at the Royal Opera's latest revival on Saturday, to come across Norah Amsellem. She has period looks, a pretty smile, a malleable physiognomy. She knows how to adapt her whole demeanour to Violetta's changing situation, so that the figure we behold on stage is not an opera singer but a human being with the power to disarm us emotionally. That may be a gift of acting, but it also reflects Amsellem's complete identification with the music. Her soprano is a bit one-dimensional, especially at the top, and she proved a surprisingly plain letter-reader. In all other set-pieces she had the theatre spellbound. "Dite alla giovine" and "Addio, del passato" were especially effective: Amsellem sang them in a beautifully controlled half-voice, stretching the tempo to its very limit. Some might call it self-indulgent; to me it sounded like the truth.

This is a superb revival. After 11 years Bob Crowley's spectacular settings still draw applause, but what counts is the care that has gone into casting and ensemble. Each of the smaller roles is made to tell, especially Gillian Knight's Annina. Charles Castronovo is the shyly appealing Alfredo, Gerald Finley an unusually sympathetic Germont. Renato Balsadonna's chorus just gets better and better. The linchpin is the conductor, Maurizio Benini. The orchestra sounds fired-up, Verdi's instrumentation is revealed in all its glory and the performance speaks with a common tongue. La traviata deserves no less.

John Allison, The Times, 1 February 2005

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article508793.ece

Since its famous first night with Angela Gheorghiu just over a decade ago, Richard Eyre’s production of La traviata has served Covent Garden well. The Royal Opera has certainly got good value from it, for Saturday’s opening was the latest of umpteen revivals. Whether or not the straightforward staging (directed here by Patrick Young) in Bob Crowley’s handsome designs serves Verdi as well is open to debate: never mind such quirks as Violetta’s “victory lap” moments before her death, the real problem is that it hardly probes beneath this rich work’s surface and fails to clarify the kind of society inhabiting the stage.

But at least Covent Garden has no hang-ups about this opera of the kind La Scala displays. In Milan it took more than a quarter of a century after Callas’s Violetta for the work to return, an absence due as much to the “Callas widows” in the audience as to the theatre’s insistence on finding the right cast. Less picky houses play Traviata all the time, and Covent Garden has managed to double-cast its current run, but despite giving fine and deeply felt performances the first team of principals are not really natural Verdians.

Perhaps it is the Alfredo of the American tenor Charles Castronovo who fares best of all. A neat-voiced Mozartian with heavier potential, he quickly got past opening nerves to sing with ardent, even tone, and his excellent stage presence is a reminder that no character in this opera goes through more varied or conflicting emotions.

The French soprano Norah Amsellem makes a welcome Royal Opera debut in the title role, portraying a beautiful fragility. But her coloratura is slightly underdone and her meeting with the dreadful Germont père feels neurotically overdone — so it is only in the exquisitely floated soft singing of the final act that she compensates for a lack of Italianate ping and becomes a fully moving Violetta.

Gerald Finley ages up well to sing his first Giorgio Germont, and makes him frighteningly manipulative. His baritone is in its prime, if a little lyrical for Verdi. Darren Jeffery brings authority to Baron Douphol, but Liora Grodnikaite is a disappointingly small-sounding Flora. Indeed, the whole party scene is a let-down, since the dancers are neither as tight nor witty as in previous revivals. At least Maurizio Benini’s conducting is authentically Verdian, and from both the orchestra and chorus he draws a tautly sprung performance full of melodic propulsion.

Edward Seckerson, The Independent, 2 February 2005

http://arts.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/article10829.ece

Seeing is not believing

The most indelible memory here of Richard Eyre's feeble 1994 staging of Verdi's exquisite tear-jerker comes at the very start. As ghostly violins eerily give notice of Violetta's untimely demise (a touch of genius on Verdi's part), the faded photograph of a young girl, an impoverished street urchin, adorning the front scrim seems to dissolve into the image of a beautiful young woman. She is expensively dressed in virginal white, tracing out the contours of her pallid complexion in a hand-held mirror. She is ill, that much is clear, and she is alone.

In two minutes or so of prelude, Eyre has given us the essential pre-history of this tragic heroine - her meteoric path to wealth, notoriety and an early grave. In 1994, this was also our first glimpse of a young singing sensation - Angela Gheorghiu. In this disappointing revival, the face and the voice belong to the French soprano Norah Amsellem. And it's a contrast almost as dramatic as that which Verdi himself springs when the chaste beauty of his prelude gives way to the riotous party of the opening scene.

A wash of orange light bathes Bob Crowley's ugly set in naughtiness. It is in poor repair, the creased and ill-fitting ceiling suggesting that Violetta's lavish home is urgently in need of restoration. To be fair to Crowley, he is at pains to stress the vulgarity of the Parisian demi-monde and his second party scene, at the home of the courtesan Flora, is a cheap and nasty nightmare of red and gold in which poorly choreographed dancers play out a Spanish divertissement on a gigantic card table. Frightful.

Amsellem has a voice and some temperament - no doubt about that. But the words and text are nowhere. She is far too preoccupied with vocal effect, and does little more than signal the emotions. I didn't for one moment believe her protestations of true love in the opening scene, and "Sempre libera" was merely a fit of pyrotechnics with everything above the stave tending to sharpness, including the closing high E-flat - a big-money-note paid without interest.

The conductor, Maurizio Benini, must share some of the blame for indulging his star. He tended to extremes of tempo, most notably in Act Two, where Violetta finally succumbs to Giorgio Germont's demands that she renounce the love of his son for the sake of the family. Amsellem really laid on the shocked, near-inaudible pianissimi here, lingering self-consciously over the terms of her sacrifice. Again, I didn't believe her. And I certainly didn't believe her as she snuck a look at the conductor as if to ensure that he really was up for milking her big moment "Amami, Alfredo". No soprano can fail to make an impression with the final act but Amsellem, for all her conviction, tipped the balance from pathos to bathos, projecting only self-pity and madness - neither of which has any place in Verdi's text.

On a more positive note, Charles Castronovo, the suave young American tenor who made such an impression in the Royal Opera's last revival of Cosi Fan Tutte, reaffirmed his promise here as Alfredo Germont. He has a bantamweight voice, a little stretched in extremis but elegantly, graciously, in step with the bel canto tone of the score.

Gerald Finley's Giorgio Germont was a role debut. Its authority came naturally to him - he has an imposing stage presence. The text was precisely, purposefully, projected. But his voice did not yet sound free in the role. Those Verdian legatos need to marinate yet a while. But at least it was a performance that came from somewhere - which is more than could be said of the production and its star.

Opera Japonica review by Ruth Elleson 2005

Also at the Royal Opera House, a notable company debut was made by the French soprano Norah Amsellem in La traviata. Sopranos who can carry off the whole role of Violetta with equal style and musicality are rare indeed, and I realised very early in my opera-going history that faced with a choice, I would rather have a fine lyric-voiced singing actress who can excel in the middle and last acts than an Act One canary. Amsellem fell firmly into my preferred category. There was an unpleasant shrillness in her first-act scena (she should have refrained from that high E flat) and she had a tendency to curdle her vowels, especially in the more conversational passages. But she gained dramatic conviction in Act 2, and finished up with one of the finest performances I’ve ever seen of the last act; with her voice reduced to a thread but supported by wonderful breath control, the musical performance alone became heartbreaking. It helps of course that her looks - beautiful, elegant, fragile and definitely Gallic - are undeniably perfect for this role. Charles Castronovo’s elegant Alfredo was on the light side vocally, and had a tendency to drift sharp, but generally acquitted himself adequately; Gerald Finley’s Germont was a completely believable character portrait, sung with a rich fullness of tone which seemed to bring the best out in his fellow cast members.