|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The Times | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| WEDNESDAY MAY 16 2001 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Opera | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A bland beauty | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| BY RODNEY MILNES | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Covent Garden's Traviata is a hit despite humdrum staging | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The second run this season of the Royal Opera’s popular production of Traviata — the house was packed — has a lot going for it. For a start, Edward Downes, that most wise and experienced of Verdi conductors, is in the pit, so every individual tempo and the musical architecture of each scene seems perfectly judged, and he finds just the right balance between dramatic pace and weight, between giving the soloists room to sing with maximum expressiveness and keeping them on a sympathetically tight rein. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fluctuations of pulse and accentuation, so crucial in this score, are never over-stressed — they are just there as part of the music’s natural flow. I cannot think of anyone I would rather hear conducting this elusive score. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| And the cast is absolutely first-rate. The company has fielded a formidable list of Violettas since the production was launched with Angela Gheorghiu in 1994, and the latest, Darina Takova, is up there with the best of them. The Bulgarian soprano has everything: a needle-fine technique that makes the first act sound easy allied to soprano sound that is as warm as it is brilliant. And full as well as warm. All too often you hear a singer who can skitter through the coloratura of the opening act but lacks the weight for the rest of the opera, but not here: Takova attacks Gran Dio! Morir si giovane in the last act with the passion and tonal heft of an Aida. Darksomely expressive of feature and trim of figure, she looks perfect too. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Her Alfredo is Giuseppe Filianoti, who also looks and sounds young, and sings with natural grace and ease. The only cavil concerns his unwisely interpolated top C at the end of his second-act scene, as unwise as Takova’s unwritten high E flat at the end of the first act: if you haven’t got it, don’t flaunt it. And Filianoti didn’t seem in the least like a raw, inexperienced youth from the provinces; suave and polished of demeanour, he looked as though he went to louche parties in the capital every night of the week. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Not so Alan Opie’s Giorgio Germont (he is sharing the role with Dmitri Hvorostovsky), sung with characteristic intelligence and awareness of text. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Here was a stuffy, self-assured provincial to a tee, and the insufferable condescension with which he treated Violetta suggested he might be a bad schoolmaster rather than a bank manager. Either way, you can be sure he was down at the local brothel twice a week without recognising any inconsistency in his attitude to fallen women. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| So, three very good principals but, as can be the way with revivals of standard repertoire in busy international houses, each giving well-polished individual interpretations that didn’t really mesh one with the other. There is a wealth of textual detail in the interchanges between these characters that wasn’t exploited in Monday’s performance, and hasn’t been from the start in Richard Eyre’s surprisingly bland production. Musically an excellent revival, but no more. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Back to May 2001 reviews | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Back to Reviews index | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Back to the main page | ||||||||||||||||||||||||