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The opera novice: La Traviata by Verdi
Verdi's tragic opera about a fallen woman has undoubted brilliance – but is it less than the sum of its parts? ponders Sameer Rahim.
When I saw La Traviata at Covent Garden last year, I admit I wasn’t overwhelmed. Verdi’s mid-career opera was first performed in 1853 and – after an initial blip where the soprano playing its consumptive heroine, Violetta, was deemed too large for the role – it has been ever-present in the repertoire. When I mentioned on Twitter that I didn’t get what the fuss was about, I was reproved by a seasoned opera fan. There are many reasons why, I reflected, an opera might not appeal to you on first viewing: the production might be bad; you might not be in the right mood; you might be affected by the person you’re with. Feeling chastened, I was determined to give it another go.
Last week I got my chance at ENO’s co-production with Opera Graz. La Traviata, variously translated as “The Fallen Woman” or “The Lost Woman”, is based on Dumas’s play The Lady of the Camélias. A courtesan called Violetta is stuck in a round of endless parties until, Alfredo, here played by Ben Johnson as a geeky writer, convinces her to live in the country. But the relationship soon unravels and all ends tragically.
Shadowing Violetta is the disease that so often afflicts morally questionable 19th-century women: consumption. The overture conveys the danger with trembling violins – the frayed strings by which her life hangs – before moving into breezier, waltz-like music. Verdi pulled off a similar effect in the opera he composed before this one, Rigoletto, which opens with the dark music of the jester’s curse and then slides into party-time with the Duke. In La Traviata there is something almost deliberately ugly about the decadent music. The famous drinking song Libiamo ne’ lieti calici (rough translation: let’s get hammered) might have a seductive swaying tune when Violetta and Alfredo sing it one another, but when the chorus join in they sound like drunks at kicking out time.
Violetta’s greatest moment (and the opera’s) is her aria of freedom Sempre Libera. It has everything an opera fan could want: a great tune, overflowing emotion and frighteningly high notes. Our Violetta, Corinne Winters, got the balance right between singing her utmost and keeping in character. When Alfredo interrupts her you want him to shove off. She will never be saved by any man.
By this point, I was ready to recant my Traviata scepticism. Unfortunately in the middle section of this short opera (about two hours) something goes awry. Having sung about the freedom of love, Violetta relents with surprising speed when the patriarch Germont orders her to stop living in sin with his son Alfredo. The director, Peter Konwitschny, describes this change of heart as a “weakness of the libretto”. In an effort to make it more convincing, he introduces on stage Alfredo’s sister – mentioned in the libretto but not present – whose marriage prospects will be destroyed by Violetta’s reputation. The heroine supposedly acts through sisterly solidarity – but it is an awkward solution, not least because the sister appears to be too youn to marry.
A further grumble: I know ENO has been struggling with its finances but given that punters were being asked to pay £99 for a stalls ticket might they have had a bit more scenery to look at? The conceit of pulling back a stage curtain to reveal yet another did, I suppose, make a point about layers of illusion. But we soon got the point. While the performers received generous applause at the end, there were some boos for the director.
I should in fairness point out that the friend I went with, on her fifth opera, loved the staging and found the performance gripping. La Traviata, though, didn’t convert me. The first act is fantastic but the middle and Violetta’s death scene were lacking. I’m not immune to melodrama: Gilda’s end in Rigoletto is devastating, as is Mimi’s in La bohème. For me, though, this opera lacks the dramatic ambiguity of Rigoletto or the precise structuring of Puccini’s opera. La Traviata has only flashes of Verdi’s genius.
Then again maybe I just wasn't in the mood.
* Until March 3. Box office: 020 7845 9300; eno.org