Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata
Opéra National de Paris
Michele Mariotti, Simon Stone, Pretty Yende, Benjamin Bernheim, Jean-François Lapointe, Catherine Trottmann, Marion Lebègue, Julien Dran, Christian Helmer, Marc Labonnette, Thomas Dear, Luca Sannai, Enzo Coro, Olivier Ayault
Paris Cinema Live - 21 September 2019
La Traviata is a great opera and I've heard it and seen it enough times not to need reminded of that nor ever feel the need to rush out and see it again. Yet here I am again watching another production of La Traviata. Really though it's only when a director has no fresh ideas and isn't able to do much with the work, pitching it in a stuffy Belle Époque setting, that it can be a bit of a chore - and even then Verdi's music is always the saving grace. If you get a director who can show the modern relevance of the work, its humanistic outlook, its fire and sense of outrage at social conventions and conservative attitudes, well then La Traviata can still have the power to impress and bring you back to see it again.
So with it being the Paris Opera, with theatre, film and opera director Simon Stone at the helm and the chance to see a much talked about new soprano Pretty Yende singing the role of Violetta Valéry, for the first time in a long while I was actually quite looking forward to my one millionth (approximately) La Traviata. Undeterred by a strike at the Paris Opera cancelling the live performance, the Paris Opera falling back on a pre-recording made a few days ago and fortunate to have turned up early enough to not miss too much when the cinema got its European time zones wrong, it was certainly a La Traviata worth making the effort to see.
Timing evidently is everything, and the issues I had getting to see the cinema broadcast turned out to be appropriate since although it's by no means a major theme in the work, there is a pressing sense of time running down in La Traviata (something made explicit in the Willy Decker production). It's there as a consideration that becomes important to Violetta Valery as she realises that there's more to life than parties and admirers and that she should grasp the opportunity for true love and happiness for the brief moment that it is open to her when she meets Alfredo. Time however is not on her side as we of course - very quickly - find out.
Not only that but Verdi makes the pressing of time very much present in his music and in the pacing of the drama. Really we are only introduced to Violetta and Alfredo and they to each other to enjoy a brief blossoming of love in Act 1, only for it to rapidly vanish and become a victim of social and monetary pressures in Act 2. There are certainly other complex motivations - guilt, a sense of unworthiness perhaps, a consciousness of age difference - that drive Violetta to finish with Alfredo, but principally its pressure from the social gossip and reputation, and there's a simmering anger against those conventions and the underlying hipocrisy of it all the fuels La Traviata.
Director Simon Stone is very good at getting that fluid sense of time in his rotating stage for the Paris production at the Garnier. He's also good at bringing a modem sensibility - a conflicted and contrasted one - to the romantic ideal of Paris and high society in this production. Violetta Valéry is a model here, her image emblasoned on posters and video advertising hoardings for expensive perfume 'Villain'. Her image dominates the stage while the reality is of course not quite as perfect. All the trappings of the lifestyle are there of course and they are indeed trappings that it proves impossible to escape from.
So we see two sides to the glamour. The fancy night club against the more down-to-earth reality of Alfredo declaring his love for Violetta out in the back alley by the bins. A Paris sequare has a grand statue, while a drunk at the foot of the dais, and instead of the florid declarations of love, Alfredo and Violetta communicate via banal instant messages and emoticons as Violetta has an after-party kebab from a Turkish fast food stall, 'Paristanbul'. Then of course, there's the scandal that comes along with the glamour. Again updating events, Violetta is accused of dragging down the name of a Saudi royal family (presumably instead of an old-fashioned baron), the tickertape newspaper headlines updated for a digital world and spreading like wildfire. In that respect it shows that the pressures on famous women who don't behave according to expectations are arguably even greater now than in Verdi's time.
That of course is the important theme of the work and it's one that Stone is able to emphasise and show is still relevant at the same time as he is able to show the personal cost by dispensing with the fake Belle Époque glamour and mannerisms of a traditional production. Visually, it's just spectacular, images blown up on a huge digital screen backdrop, the stage rotating fluidly and impressively to keep sets changing, adding and accumulating a picture of Violetta's lifestyle, how she interacts with those around her and where the conflicts and problems arise within it. It perhaps tries a little too hard, when everything that is really essential is there in the music and can also be found in the performances, but it's an impressive spectacle nonetheless and an intelligent response to the work.
And as magnificent as the production looked, it was the musical and singing performances that contributed to the overall success of the production. The Paris Orchestra sounded terrific under Michele Mariotti's conducting, striking that beautiful balance that the work has between Verdi's lyrical flights and the underlying fury, capturing an Italianate view of Parisian glamour. The young South African soprano Pretty Yende secures her growing reputation here with a very memorable Violetta Valéry. Her singing and interpretation were superb, placing an individual stamp on the work, and her acting performance - so critical here amid the melodrama - was impressive.
Youth belying experience was also of benefit to Benjamin Bernheim's Alfredo, generating a passion with Yende's Violetta that felt real and sincere. Giorgio Germont can be a rather stuffy role just by its nature, and there wasn't much Jean-François Lapointe could do about that, but the role was well sung. Simon Stone's production might have drained a little of the heated melodrama out of La Traviata by undercutting the glamour at key points, but it was an approach that ultimately worked in favour of the work and did indeed leave the heavy lifting principally to Yende and Mariotti who, if the impact of the conclusion is anything to go by, were more than up to the task.
Links: Opéra National de Paris
Vincenzo Bellini - I Capuleti e i Montecchi
Opernhaus Zürich, 2015
Fabio Luisi, Christof Loy, Alexei Botnarciuc, Olga Kulchynska, Joyce DiDonato, Benjamin Bernheim, Roberto Lorenzi, Gieorgij Puchalski
Zurich - 5 July 2015
Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi bears little enough relation to Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' as it is, so it's a bit of a challenge to add another level of distance from the original and still meet expectations. But then the director here for Zurich's new production is Christof Loy, so some deviation and modernisation from the original stage directions is expected, and if anyone can make that work it's Loy. Loy is fortunate - but it can't be a coincidence - to be able to work with great performers in such productions. In the case of I Capuleti e i Montecchi, the team is an exceptional one, and the new production consequently an overwhelming success.
Essentially what is left of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' in I Capuleti e i Montecchi (the libretto actually taken from another source) is two rival Italian families teetering on the brink of all-out gang war, and a young couple from the two families who want to get married and live a life without fear of the constant feuds and assassinations. It's 'The Godfather' really, Romeo the Michael Corleone of the family, a young man with progressive ideas refusing to inherit the role as the boss of a murderous mob family, but he is drawn in against his will, unable to escape the blood ties that determine how he must act.
Put like that, it seems obvious to stage I Capuleti e i Montecchi in such a way, but it's not at all obvious that it would work or that Bellini's bel canto music is up to the relocation of a more modern setting. Between Fabio Luisi's musical direction and Loy's dramatic direction of it on the stage, it turns out however that it is more than capable of sustaining just such an interpretation. The mood is well established during the overture, the revolving set showing a series of rooms littered with bodies of gentlemen in suits. Bodies piled up in offices, in anterooms, in bathrooms, in bedrooms. We also see a young child being prepared for a wedding, and later see her as a young woman. As the stage revolves and the scenes flow, we see however that she is clearly traumatised by the carnage. Death is all she has ever known.
The mood is sustained by the dimly lit, sepia toned lighting through the Venetian blinds spilling shadowy lines across the wood-panelled sparsely decorated rooms. The rooms are invariably inhabited by powerful men in dark suits and tuxedos, standing around looking threatening. The tension is such that you feel a fight could break out at any moment and inevitably it does, though mostly off-stage, the set revolving like the sweep of a camera pan to the adjoining room where more bodies litter the floor. Loy also brings in an additional non-singing character to shadow the performers. He/she is an adjutant for Romeo, a go-between that permits the otherwise unlikely frequent incursions that the Montecchi Romeo seems to be able to freely make into Capuletti turf to visit Giulietta's room. This silent sinister figure however also incorporates the musical motif of premonitory death that lies between them.
There's a lot more to making the staging of I Capuleti e i Montecchi work than simply dressing the sets and the characters like it were 'The Godfather' although Alexei Botnarciuc gives a great Brando impersonation as Capellio, the head of the Cappelli family. It's Loy's direction of the singers as actors that makes it work convincingly, his use of the stage as ever impeccable, every single scene and movement contributing to the drama, looking cool and stylish. It's not enough however to turn a Romeo and Juliet story into a Mob film, and Loy doesn't neglect this either. You never at any stage (including the violent opening overture) forget that there are other scarcely any less violent passions involved here between Romeo and Giulietta.
Fabio Luisi recognises this too and his conducting of Philharmonia Zürich was remarkable, fully exploring the moods underlying the melodies. With a view of the orchestra, there were occasions when my attention was drawn away from the stage, just to see how Luisi was vigorously and precisely managing the orchestra to marshal Bellini's musical forces in service of the drama. Any distraction however is short-lived due to the increasing tensions that occur on the stage and by the singing performances that interpret them.
If there was rigour in terms of matching the intensity of the music with the dramatic direction, it was only enhanced by a uniformly impressive cast. Joyce DiDonato is not unexpectedly something of a phenomenon as Romeo, convincing in the trouser role, if not quite comfortable wearing the boots it seems. A few high notes were less than secure, but as a whole, the dramatic nature of the role suited her and she sang and played with real intensity. Olga Kulchynska was more than a capable match as Giulietta, her voice soaring with the high drama. Benjamin Bernheim also made a very strong impression as Tebaldo, his performance warmly received by the audience at the curtain call.
This production is now available to view for free streaming on-line on ARTE Concert.
Links: Festspiele Zürich, ARTE Concert
Vincenzo Bellini - La Straniera
Opernhaus Zürich, 2013
Fabio Luisi, Christof Loy, Edita Gruberova, Veronica Simeoni, Dario Schmunck, Franco Vassallo, Benjamin Bernheim, Pavel Daniluk, Reinhard Mayr
Opernhaus Zürich - 2 July 2013
There's really only one reason for the existence of a work like La Straniera. Like most bel canto operas, it's a highly charged drama of limited plot credibility but it gives the lead soprano ample opportunity to demonstrate her singing abilities. There are occasionally other qualities to be found, and with Bellini the music is usually filled with glorious melodies that are a little more attuned to the dramatic content, which is fortunate since the plot of La Straniera needs all the assistance it can get. Fortunately, the production for the 2013 summer festival at the Zurich Opera House had one of the best teams imaginable to get the best out of the work with Fabio Luisi conducting, Christof Loy directing and Edita Gruberova singing the lead role of the mysterious stranger.
In terms of plot, well if you're a member of the chorus playing the townspeople, you're thinking would go along something like this. Who is that mysterious stranger seen moping around town, dressed in black? We've always known she's up to no good and now we have something on her. She's been seen as a threat to the forthcoming marriage of Arturo to Isoletta, and now she's only gone and actually killed Baron Valdeburgo. Let's put her to death! Oh, hold on - here's Arturo and he's claiming it was he who killed the baron. And now here's the baron and he says he's not dead after all. Well, she must still be guilty of something since she's keeping her identity secret. Can we still not just put her to death? Oh wait, she's the Queen! What!?
It takes a lot to make that kind of plot work. It goes without saying that you need a soprano of extraordinary ability to sing the role of Alaide, but you also need a strong singer who can also act and have sufficient personality of her own to lend to the role, and you need a director who can actually give them something to work with. You have all the necessary qualities in Edita Gruberova and Christof Loy. Having worked together in recent years on Donizetti's Roberto Devereux and Lucrezia Borgia to spectacular results, the prospect of them working together on Bellini's opera was to say the least mouthwatering, but not without a certain amount of trepidation as to whether they could pull it off again. Thankfully, after a few initial doubts, they did.
Loy's concept wasn't the clearest, but at least it wasn't one of the minimalist chairs and dinner jackets productions that he's been fond of recently. He could do that and make it work I suspect, but instead he aims for a fairly traditional period setting, with real costumes and backdrops and everything. There are a few quirks inevitably, most of them involving ropes. Is it because there's such a mournful pall of death hanging over the start of the opera? Isoletta concerned about the likelihood of her marriage tomorrow turning into a fiasco because of Arturo's love for 'la straniera'. Is Arturo's impossible situation likely to lead to him hanging himself? Or are the ropes representative of the townspeople, who are just puppets of the suspicious Osburgo? Or does it reflect their mood and their desire to string up the dark evil woman in their midst?
Whatever the purpose of the ropes, Loy nonetheless sets the mood well, contrasting the black mourning clothes and mysterious veil of the stranger with the wedding dress that Isoletta wears in preparation for her wedding. La Straniera's dramatic content turns on the question of whether we going to have a wedding or a wake, and that's well covered. Or a coronation. Bellini nearly gives the game away early on, Auturo having a vision of the mysterious woman wearing a crown and Loy has a little bit of fun by having Gruberova as Alaide walk on stage in the second act wearing her crown before realising that everyone is actually waiting for the bride and slipping off-stage again.
Setting the appropriate mood is one thing, but dramatic conviction is all important and Loy makes that work too. There's no standing around here. Every ounce of emotional charge to be found in the situation, in the score and in the singing is made to count. It's the singing which is paramount however and as in those previous cases of Loy working with Gruberova in the bel canto repertoire, every note and gesture is put in service of making what is a ludicrous plot actually feel like a matter of vast life-or-death importance.
There were a few early concerns over how long Edita Gruberova can continue to carry roles like this, but they too were soon completely banished. There were a few slight wobbles early on and her pitch wasn't quite there in her duet with Dario Schmunck, but when it came to delivering the coloratura in those frequent scenes of great emotional anguish, Gruberova was beyond reproach. I've heard the great Slovak soprano many times but never before live in the theatre, and her voice is simply remarkable. Without microphones and mixing involved, her voice just dominates everything with that distinct timbre that is clear and resonant. She not only carried the singing honours however, but - particularly in the hands of Christof Loy - her acting ability was just as impressive. From the moment she walks on the stage, she is carrying the weight of her character's background and status - regal and mournful - and expressing it in gesture and in every nuance of her vocal coloratura.
La Straniera may to all intents and purposes be a one woman show, but the supporting elements built around the lead all need to be in place as well and the supporting cast were all very fine. Isoletta only appears at the beginning and the end of the work, but mezzo-soprano Veronica Simeoni ensured that her character's predicament contributed to the setting and made a strong impression. Dario Schmunck was a rather dishevelled-looking Arturo, but supplied all the fire that is necessary to charge the drama. Franco Vassallo's Valdeburgo was well received and rock solid, even if his diction wasn't always the clearest. Even with such reliable support, with Loy's strong dramatic focus and Fabio Luisi working it from the orchestra pit, it's still a challenge for anyone to make the ending of La Straniera work. An air of disbelief at the plot twists inevitably remains here, but just as much admiration for the attempt to carry it off. If Edita Gruberova can't quite do it then no-one can.
