Why, one might ask, would I want to go to my umpteenth revival of Sir Richard Eyre’s La traviata at The Royal Opera, a production that’s pushing 30 years old and has been revived nearly every year (often more than once) and one that we’ve already reviewed ten times at Bachtrack? The answer is that every Violetta is different and that, last night, we were to hear Lisette Oropesa, a soprano at the top of her game whose Violetta blew away audiences in Madrid last year as well as at The Met. She did not disappoint.
The keystone of her performance was a truly formidable level of technique. Whatever technical aspect you talk about – breathing, placement of vowel sounds, details of Italian diction, legato, timbre, emphasis of bel canto phrasing or many more – Oropesa had them all under control, with supreme confidence in her ability to make her voice do anything she wanted it to. Technique brings freedom: the freedom to choose the exact interpretation of every phrase and to know that it’s going to come out exactly the way she wants it to. Opera singers are constantly making difficult decisions and Oropesa seemed to make every one in a way that was musically and dramatically felicitous. I’ll give just one example: in “Addio, del passato”, when Violetta bids goodbye to the past from her deathbed, she gasps for breath between phrases. How loud to make the gasp? Too loud and you break the musical flow, maybe sounding contrived. Too soft and you sound too healthy. Oropesa nailed the balance exactly right – as she did in hundreds of other places.
With that musical freedom came an ability to make every word of the role count, whether it’s the glitter of Act 1, the cheerfulness turning to despair of Act 2 scene 1, the impossibility of an exit from her grief at the card playing scene or the inevitability of her terminal illness of Act 3. Her performance convinced at every point even as we enjoyed the music.
There was another great singer on the stage last night in the shape of baritone Christian Gerhaher, whose performance as Giorgio Germont will have split the crowds. Germont is often sung with elegant legato. Gerhaher – as anyone who has heard him singing Lieder knows – can produce elegant legato by the bucketload, but that’s not what he chose to do here. Gerhaher’s Germont was full of steel, a man determined to carry his plan through, brushing aside any obstacles or contrarian evidence. Psychologists would diagnose a severe case of plan confirmation bias. After my initial surprise at the lack of the baritone’s usual honeyed tones, I found that his interpretation worked for me, more believable and dramatic than the pompous old buffer that a smoother voice often creates.
Liparit Avetisyan gave us a very good performance as Alfredo, but short of the greatness of his co-star. The basic timbre of his tenor is very attractive and his interpretation of the role was credible. But I wasn’t really transported in the same way, apart from in Act 3 with a superb “Parigi, o cara” duet between the two desperate lovers. There was also a slight unevenness of phrasing, with moments of loudness or softness that jarred slightly with the flow of the music. Partly, these were associated with a distinct impression that conductor Antonello Manacorda wasn’t exactly at one with his two stars when it came to the timing of rubato, the singers wanting a fraction more space than they were being given. This was the only flaw in an otherwise excellent performance from the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, particularly from the strings, with lightness of touch in the staccato passages and shaped arabesques in the longer breathed phrases. From the beginning of the prelude, we felt in safe hands, with tempi feeling right and the blended sound in balance.
The lesser roles were all sung to a high quality, with revival director Pedro Ribeiro conjuring unusually detailed acting performances. My eye was caught by Egor Zhuravskii's Gastone both for a smooth-voiced tenor and for a confidence in his movement around stage, which was almost as elegant as the dancers surrounding him at Flora's ball.
Eyre’s staging – as commented many times before – is solid, visually attractive and permits the singing actors to stamp their own interpretation of the characters without being constrained by a directorial agenda. If you’re looking for a new and radical take on La traviata, you’re in the wrong place. But what we were here for was Oropesa’s Violetta, which will be difficult to better. We came, we saw, she conquered.
