Verdi’s star-crossed lovers transcend crass costuming
They say bad luck comes in threes. But Irish National Opera (INO) appears to be bucking the trend. In 2018, illness did for the tenor on the opening morning of the company’s production of Aida at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. A replacement flew in, arriving at lunchtime. And also at lunchtime, soprano Orla Boylan was struggling with a bad chest infection, so executive director Diego Fasciati again hit the phones.
When the curtain went up, Boylan was clearly getting worse. Come the interval, an announcement was made: a replacement soprano had arrived at 6pm from (I think) Milan and would sing the role at corner front stage, while the visibly shaken Boylan “walked” the second half.
Two down: it may well have been history-making.
Last Tuesday, it was opening night for Verdi’s La Traviata at the Gaiety. Artistic director Fergus Sheil appeared to inform the audience, with gentle grace, that the major baritone role of Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont (who carries much of Act Two, including the glorious aria Di Provenza) would be sung by a replacement who had arrived earlier in the day from Italy.
It was the young South
Korean baritone Leon Kim. Did he work? Did he what? A bit unsure of what were obviously reduced moves and looking more like a young lover himself than the father of a troublesome and wayward son, he sang magnificently and got a justified rapturous reception.
So, only one catastrophe this time. INO’s record is getting better and presumably the prospect of opening night heart attacks are receding for Fasciati and Sheil.
With tenor Mario Chang as Alfredo and soprano Amanda Woodbury as Violetta, the lead roles are in more than safe hands – particularly those of Woodbury, whose lyrical range truly soars to the demands the composer makes for the role.
In particular, as courtesan Violetta descends into despair in Act Two on the realisation that she is doomed to an early and lonely death from consumption, and estranged from her jealous lover due to his father’s pious rejection of having a former prostitute as his daughter-in-law, Woodbury’s tone thins into a heartbroken wail. It is a piercingly desolate sound that never becomes shrill: it is the vocal personification of hope disappearing forever.
The opera is largely in the hands of the three principals, with little chance for the minor characters to make an impression, but baritone Brendan Collins does an excellent job as Violetta’s protector, the Barone Douphol, as does bass Graeme Danby (last seen in Dublin in the title role in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale) as Dottore Grenvil.
Director Olivia Fuchs has chosen to stage the piece in retrospect, opening with Violetta on her death bed and remembering what has brought her there, and as the action takes over, the bed hangs somewhat grotesquely above the singers. But designer Katie Davenport’s device of a double stage-within-a-stage where the chorus perform their party frolics is effective.
The same can’t be said for her costumes, which look rather unfortunately like the leftovers of a dressing-up box.
The beautiful Violetta, supposedly the cynosure of all eyes in fashionable Parisian high society, is done absolutely no favours in rolled black stockings below a tatty kneelength frock, and dying in a corselet and baggy pantalettes reminiscent of a pantomime dame. The beautifully Junoesque Woodbury deserves both more glamour and more restraint.
Conductor Killian Farrell held the INO orchestra with a light hand perfectly suited to the romantic lyricism that needs absolute control not to be overwhelmed by the vast romantic swells of the score. It can often be down to the sureness of a conductor to keep Verdi’s masterpiece in its place among the opera canon’s Top 20, and on the earliest bucket list of every budding opera-goer.
Verdi, whose own life wasn’t a million miles from his storyline, certainly made Violetta (modelled on Dumas’s Marguerite in La Dame aux Camellias) believable, something not always achieved in romantic tragedy.
La Traviata will play the Opera House in Cork on Wednesday and Friday. Thursday’s and last night’s performances were recorded live for future broadcast on Lyric fm.