La Traviata review – sensational performance amid the belle époque debauchery

Something very peculiar happens to the moon in Opera North’s first new staging of La Traviata in more than 10 years. Alessandro Talevi’s production opens with Violetta framed as a dramatic lunar silhouette, though the surface of the moon quickly dissolves into an exploration of a palpitating tube that looks like the probing of an endoscope through human tissue. All productions of Verdi’s opera need to present a convincing account of the heroine’s tubercular condition, though this is the first I’ve seen to offer an internal view of her bronchial canal. This surgical innovation aside, Talevi’s production is set amid the opium-eating underworld of the belle époque.

Violetta’s guests lounge about in such an advanced state of intoxicated déshabillé that the opening soirée becomes indistinguishable from an orgy; while the humping and groping that goes on in response to Alfredo’s toast makes the bumptious brindisi rhythm seem positively salacious.

The two leads prove to be extremely well matched, not least because both belong to a generation of talented young singers emerging from South Korea. Ji-Min Park’s innocent Alfredo seems a little out of his depth amid the debauchery and sang slightly under the note in the first act: though his voice bloomed into a fresh, lyric tenor later on. As Violetta, Hye-Youn Lee is simply sensational, with a sweet tone and agile upper register. Her preparation for Sempre libera is to inhale deeply from a stray hookah pipe, which provides a novel explanation for the sudden explosion of very high singing. Roland Wood completes the central trio with an assured Germont père, whose austere administration of tough love is tempered with a redeeming hint of compassion. His nostalgic appeal to the rustic charms of Provence is sung with a wine-dark tone that could hardly be more persuasive.

The exciting young Italian conductor Gianluca Marcianò makes such a stylish impact on his Opera North debut that one hopes for an imminent return; and the chorus are in fulsome voice – as well as a slightly louche state of undress. The macabre closing image presents a shadowy audience of masked revellers applauding Violetta on her death-bed; a sinister reminder that every aspect of her public life has been a performance. As performances go, this one takes some beating.