★★★★☆
Scarfs, blankets, restorative drinks; at the first night of Opera Holland Park’s new season they all helped us to fight rising damp. The last thing that spectators at La traviata need is to catch a mortal illness. Verdi’s consumptive heroine, Violetta, demonstrated hers, even before the orchestra struck, with a string of digitised wheezy breaths, an early sign that the director Rodula Gaitanou might like overdoing things. Within minutes Violetta is coughing blood too, blood prettily set off against a costume of dazzling white.
Luckily, these opening moments also reveal that in Lauren Fagan this new production has a Violetta of considerable force, plangent tones and solid dramatic instincts. It takes such a singer to make a mark on the long oblong curse of