(This performance took place in July, but I have only now been able to transfer this review from the old blog).
LA TRAVIATA, Royal Opera House, 3 July 2009
Cast
Violetta...............................................Renee Fleming
Flora...................................................Monika-Evelin Liiv
Marquis d'Obigny.............................Kostas Smorignas
Baron Douphol................................ .Eddie Wade
Doctor Grenvil...................................Richard Wiegold
Gastone.............................................Haoyin Xue
Alfredo...............................................Jospeh Calleja
Anina..................................................Sarah Pring
Giuseppe..........................................Neil Gillespie
Giorgio Germont..............................Thomas Hampson
Messenger.......................................''Charbel Mattar
Servant...............................................Jonathan Coad
Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by Antonio Pappano
Such a wonderful performance, with a dream cast and conductor! Right from the first note of the prelude, Pappano conjured incredibly wistful sounds from the orchestra, and the entire performance was of this high standard.
Renee Fleming was the best Violetta I have seen in years, looking beautiful though fragile, as Violetta should. She gave a very nuanced performance in Act I, pensive in fors'e lui and frenetic in Sempre libera, with a sub-text almost of hysteria, as she acknowledges that she knows she is dying, and is determined to enjoy what life remains to her. I was delighted that she and Pappano didn't leave a space for the audience to applaud between the two halves of the aria!! (They did at the rehearsal...my view is that it spoils the continuity by interrupting Violetta's train of thought).
Calleja as Alfredo was perhaps less subtle and sensitive in Act I, but then he is playing a rather unsubtle and insensitive young man, so this was in character! Certainly he sang the high notes of his Act II arias with ringing confidence.
Thomas Hampson brought his usual mellifluousness of tone and elegance of person to a character with whom the audience usually has difficulty in sympathising.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIGWNBgMzt8
I've never heard anyone sing "Amami, Alfredo" with such passion and desperation, and the orchestra reflected Violetta's feelings with equal intensity....I had already started to cry during the scene between Violetta and the father, but this literally had me sobbing. (I didn't bother to try to control it, as nearly everyone else in the audience, at least near me, was crying too!)
I'll just make a few comments about the production. It's a 'conventional' production, i.e. set in the nineteenth century, but I don't have a problem with that!! In the first act, Violetta is wearing a white dress, which one might have thought was unsuitable for a woman in her profession, but (a) it's a beautiful dress and Fleming looks gorgeous in it (b) in fact the statement she is making is..."I can afford this". When she comes to Flora's party in Act II, she is wearing a equally expensive and bejewelled black dress.
After the shocking scene in which Alfredo throws the money at her, the father gives her his hand and escorts her from the room - this wasn't done in the production before, could it have been Thomas Hampson's idea? It's this sort of detail that makes or breaks a production. The point is that just after Alfredo has thrown the money and she collapses, the father offers to help her and she turns away, but then later she accepts his help....
The Prelude to Act III was unbearably poignant - of course, as I intimated, I had already started crying long before. "Addio del passato", of which she gets both verses, was heartbreaking, I am sure that she and the orchestra deserved the applause but for me, I just sat in stunned silence!
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