La Traviata, Theater an der Wien, Vienna, review

The Theater an der Wien, founded by Magic Flute librettist Emanuel Schikaneder in 1801, has reinvented itself over past six years as Vienna’s new opera house. For this La Traviata, directed by Deborah Warner, the theatre joined forces with the Wiener Festwochen, an annual festival with a reputation for innovation and experimentation.

Add a youthful cast, bolstered by the spritely Arnold Schoenberg Choir and conducted by Omer Meir Wellber, a young protégé of Daniel Barenboim, and the result is a take on Verdi’s masterpiece that is unfusty, achingly stylish and smart.

The evening starts, as it were, after the end, with a hospital bed on a bare stage. During the Prelude, orderlies transfer a lifeless body to a trolley. But, as that scene morphs into the party of Act I, it becomes clear we’re in a pretty straightforwardly updated production.

Smart suits, cocktail dresses and cream furniture abound. Violetta and Alfredo’s country retreat is a deconstructed hunting lodge where they canoodle in front of a fire. The baize of gambling tables at Flora’s party is evoked by green strip lights.

Jeremy Herbert’s designs are impeccable (a beautifully recreated up-stage forest is a nice if unexplained feature). Jean Kalman’s lighting, too, is immaculate. But it’s never quite clear what Warner’s trying to tell us. More problematically, the modern setting suggests a permissive society onto which the patriarchy and hypocrisy at the cruel heart of Verdi’s drama fits unconvincingly. Violetta’s position and occupation are never clearly defined, and her sacrifice rings hollow. Nothing replaces what is stripped away in this modern streamlining, and ultimately the drama ends up neutralised; Violetta’s return to the bleached hospital for her death seems apt.

Against this background, the cast struggled to elicit a great deal of sympathy, but Russian soprano Irina Lungu was a touching, convincingly human Violetta, who sang tidily and affectingly, even if the voice is small, and short on colour and bloom. As Alfredo, the Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu occasionally pushed his lyrical voice too hard, but sang securely and with elegance, and was a likeable, engaging presence.

Gabriele Viviani, however, bulldozed his way through most of Germont’s music, with fraying timbre and suspect intonation. Wellber might have counselled more restraint from both him and the efficient but unsubtle Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in the pit, and, while his conducting was precise and admirable in its way, it was also somewhat short on warmth.

Until June 5. Tickets: www.festwochen.at