Britten - The Turn of the Screw (Brussels, 2021)

Benjamin Britten - The Turn of the Screw (Brussels, 2021)

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2021

Ben Glassberg, Andrea Breth, Ed Lyon, Sally Matthews, Henri de Beauffort, Katharina Bierweiler, Carole Wilson, Julian Hubbard, Giselle Allen

La Monnaie Streaming/Opera Vision, April 2021

Britten's chamber opera The Turn of the Screw perfectly captures the mood and character of the chillingly sinister original Henry James story, but just as importantly it captures much of the psychological mystery and ambiguity within the ghostly tale. A director can enhance or emphasise certain elements of that ambiguity, but it shouldn't reveal too much. Britten's perfect score and the wonderful writing for the voice are more than enough to bring out the deeper character and suggestion that lies within it. 

Andrea Breth does that quite well in the 2021 La Monnaie production, placing the emphasis more on the expression of the horror deriving from the inner delusions of the impressionable governess, but it's not without suggesting that there is indeed something to her fears. The opera certainly hints at dark events, at the loss of childhood innocence and the corrupting influence of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel and the harmful legacy they have left over the children.

The first thing that strikes you in the opening scene of this production - as it perhaps should more than any obvious input or emphasis of the director - is the effect of the music and the mood it creates right from the outset. That has as much to do with Britten's score as with the meticulous performance of the La Monnaie orchestra under Ben Glassberg and by the singing of Sally Matthews as the Governess and Ed Lyon as the narrator. Both demonstrate a gorgeous tone with beautiful enunciation, but also delivering the content of the libretto with suggestion of the horror to unfold.

In setting, lighting and colouration, it's doesn't vary too much from convention and expectations, looking very much like every production of The Turn of the Screw looks. Dark, monochrome and austere, with cool lighting and plenty of shadow, but here director Andrea Breth allows several other spectral figures to appear on the stage. Even in the opening scene, Miss Jessel and a particularly demented looking Peter Quint already make an appearance, moving in and even taking over some of the narrator and the Governess's vocal lines, their influence over the whole tone of the work and what goes on in Bly already made evident.

It's also evident that Breth intends to extend that mood out and make visible some of the more hidden and suggestive undercurrents. Rather like the 2012-2016 Northern Ireland Opera production - back when we were fortunate to have an adventurous and ambitious artistic director of opera in Oliver Mears - this production uses panels, sliding doors and hidden rooms to open up the dark recesses of Bly or the Governess - take your pick: it's open for interpretation who is driving the psychosis that is rapidly escalating, or tightening like the turn of a screw.

It comes from a place "where things unspoken of can be', and Raimund Orfeo Voigt's sets shows the unspoken lying in wait everywhere to entrap. You can never remove the undercurrents of sexual repression of the Governess running up against the suggestion of sexual abuse of the children or some dark influence that they have been subjected to at the hands of Quint and Jessel, there is less of that made explicit in this production of the work. It's certainly hinted at, but if the emphasis in this production is principally within the mind of Governess, we can see that she doesn't have sufficient knowledge of such evil to imagine it playing out.

In some ways I even wonder if there is an angle there to be explored in The Turn of the Screw, and whether it is also important to retain adherence to the period in order to bring it out. There does seem to be a generational conflict in the changing times and attitudes, the older generation fearing the new, seeing it as decadent and corrupt, overturning traditional values. The Governess seems to be in-between, not comfortable with the past or the present, fearing for what lies ahead for the future generation. The loss of innocence that may already have happened and she feels powerless to intervene, or it may indeed be her misguided attempts at over-protectiveness that result in the tragic conclusion.

On a more general note, one of the policies I like about La Monnaie - aside from their adventurous programming and choice of directors - is how they retain a few strong performers on their books who are versatile and supremely capable in a number of varied roles and styles. Sally Matthews is just superb here as Governess, firm of voice, secure in range, but also capable of bringing real urgency and personality to a fairly complex character. Andrea Breth also fulfills perfectly the La Monnaie policy of modernising with purpose when it is appropriate to do so. Although this looks period in costume and set design - there are no mobile phones here - it uses modern techniques to extend the themes beyond the period, breaking down walls - quite literally - to work more closely with the music, not just the dramatic content of the libretto.

Musically too, the production is of an exceptionally high standard, as beautiful an account of this Britten work as you could hope for. Evidence of the quality of the performance is clear from the superb sound mixing that La Monnaie have captured for this streamed live recording. Every instrument can be heard, every little detail that adds to the character of the work, the voices rising clear above the orchestration with a natural theatrical sounding resonance. Aside from the already mentioned Ed Lyon and Sally Matthews then there is much to enjoy in the singing of Julian Hubbard as Quint and Giselle Allen - the quintessential Miss Jessel. Carole Wilson likewise is a fine Mrs Grose and there are good performances Henri de Beauffort and Katharina Bierweiler as Miles and Flora.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt

Rimsky-Korsakov - The Tale of Tsar Saltan (Brussels, 2019)

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - The Tale of Tsar Saltan

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2019

Alain Altinoglu, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Svetlana Aksenova, Bogdan Volkov, Olga Kulchynska, Ante Jerkunica, Stine Marie Fischer, Bernarda Bobro, Carole Wilson, Vasily Gorshkov, Alexander Vassiliev, Nicky Spence, Alexander Kravets

La Monnaie steaming - June 2019

The Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov has lately been viewing opera in the context of therapy, in productions like Carmen, Pelléas et Mélisande and Les Troyens, the intention always clearly to delve more deeply into the works and explore their underlying themes. The results have been to varying levels of success and suitability for their subjects, but with Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan, the director is on much more familiar ground, in Russian opera where some of his best work has been achieved.

The idea of exploring the underlying psychology of works actually has a two-fold purpose, perhaps even three in the case of The Tale of Tsar Saltan. One is to bring less familiar Russian classics to the attention of a modern western audience who may be less enamoured of fairy-tales and make them accessible. The second is indeed to delve into the subtext of the fairy tale, and - when considered as being a technique used widely by this director - the third is to show perhaps that opera is indeed a kind of therapy in its own right, reaching out and communicating on a non-verbal level through music and dramatic subtext.

In the La Monnaie production of The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Dmitri Tcherniakov adds a modern-day real-world framing device around the fairy tale that doesn't so much put the magical fantasy at a distance as bring us closer to it. (This is something that Romeo Castellucci has also been doing to powerful effect in the mythology of Orphée et Eurydice and the monumentally fantastical The Magic Flute). Here the fairy story is told to a young boy with autism. He has never seen his father and doesn't understand why his parents are estranged, so his mother tells him The Tale of Tsar Saltan, finding that the only way of reaching him is through the toy soldiers and magical tales that so enchant him, hoping to communicate the truth through the fable, casting herself as the tsarina.

The characteristics of Pushkin's fairy tale are familiar, his mother suffering a kind of Cinderella upbringing, abused by her mother and two wicked sisters. When they are presented to the tsar who is looking for a bride her sisters can only promise extravagant weddings while the youngest girl - a humble seamstress - promises she can deliver a worthy heir for the tsar. And becoming tsarina she does, but on the birth of the child her disgruntled sisters intercept the messenger and the tsar is informed that that the tsarina has given birth to a monster. To the astonishment of the villagers on this occasion for happiness and celebration, a message returns from the tsar saying that his wife and child should be thrown into the sea in a barrel.

Mythology and fairy tales traditionally have an important role to play in putting an important message across to a wide audience in a way that can endure for centuries, and opera can be seen to fulfil the same function. More than just musical drama for entertainment, and certainly more than being a singing contest to debate over who sings roles best, opera at its best and most meaningful - like Die Zauberflöte cited above - communicates something essential about our understanding of the world and of humanity's place within it, along with all the joys and troubles that come with it.

Tcherniakov's production of Tsar Saltan is a way of finding a route back to the underlying meaning of the work and to some extent necessarily reinterpreting it for a new age. The fairy tale and the opera are essentially about the loss of innocence of a child struggling to come to terms with the reality of the world. The realisation that it can be cruel, unfair and unjust needs to be reconciled with an awareness that life itself is a miracle, and that it can still be possible to find good within it. Using an autistic child allows the audience a way of seeing the 'magic' in the fairy tale of existence again.

In fact watching the opera in this way the concept is so good and the performances so impressive that it feels completely natural and authentic, as if this is the only way to see the opera and you couldn't imagine it being done any differently. And it's hard to imagine a more traditional representation being as profoundly moving as the progression and resolution that Tcherniakov devises for it, which - very much in line with truth and reality - doesn't mean that there is necessarily a happy ending to the fairy tale, much as one might wish for it.

There's much more that needs to be done to make this more than just a clever idea and Tcherniakov's production design is perfectly up to the task. It starts with a plain wood panelling background, mother and child playing together enveloped in a dull reality. As the story is related, the narrative magic exerts its influence and begins to take over, first populated by characters in cross-hatched puffy costumes (similar to David Hockney's designs for the famous Glyndebourne production of A Rake's Progress), with sketchy animation gradually drawing the boy/Gvidon into the swan's womb-like world of security. The blending and balance of ugly reality with animated magical fantasy is masterful.

There are of course other benefits to be gained from Dmitri Tcherniakov introducing a work well-known only in Russia in such an effective manner to western Europe, and primarily that's permitting us to enjoy Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's beautiful orchestration and melodic flair - the Flight of the Bumblebee originating from this work - perfectly attuned to the dramatic and emotional core of the story, overflowing with glorious choruses. These are all very much essential Russian opera characteristics of course and brought out marvellously by Alain Altinoglu conducting the orchestra of La Monnaie.

Just as wondrous are the singing performances since Rimsky-Korsakov's vocal writing can be underestimated in favour of his considerable fame as an orchestrator. Svetlana Aksenova as the mother/tsarina and Bogdan Volkov as the boy/Gvidon are just incredible with the kind of Russian voices needed here; strong in delivery, but filled with warmth and passion and a little bit of an edge of bordering on despair. This is another outstanding, imaginative production from Tcherniakov, Altinoglu and La Monnaie, every element working perfectly in service of the opera, recognising the extraordinary ability of the medium to communicate on so many levels, and using them all brilliantly.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt

Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer (Vienna, 2015 - Webcast)

Richard Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer

Wiener Staatsoper, 2015

Peter Schneider, Christine Mielitz, Hans Peter König, Ricarda Merbeth, Herbert Lippert, Michael Volle, Thomas Ebenstein, Carole Wilson

Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home - 11 September 2015

Christine Mielitz's production of Der fliegende Holländer is not as conceptually abstract and modernised as her Parsifal for the Vienna State Opera, but then the questions of mythology and how they are applied are quite different in the two works that span the opposite ends of Wagner's 'mature' period. That's not to say that Der fliegende Holländer can't be radically re-interpreted - as in the recent Bayreuth production - but the 'meaning' or universal application that can be gleaned from such productions seems to be limited to central question of commerce versus the enduring place of myth and art.

Even in its recent half-way house production of the work at the Royal Opera House, Tim Albery's production was able to offer nothing new to those themes, but with Andris Nelsons conducting, it did at least recognise that there is potentially something more to be gained from a careful and close reading of the score. The true worth of Der fliegende Holländer as an opera is there to be found in its compositional structure and developing musical effects. Like all the best ghost-stories it's all about the way you tell it, and getting as close as possible to Wagner's voice is the surest way to successfully put across the work's use of myth and legend.

Which is good in the case of the 2015 performance of this production at the Wiener Staatsoper, because it has Peter Schneider at the helm of the Flying Dutchman. I've never heard Schneider attempt anything radical with Wagner - he doesn't for example have the personal flair that Christian Thielemann or Daniel Barenboim bring to the works - but in terms of how he understands the dynamic of Wagner's work and manages to bring out the full force of the traditional weight and colour of the score, I find Schneider most impressive. He always commands a terrific performance from the State Opera orchestra, and that's the case with this broadcast performance of Der fliegende Holländer.

Christine Mielitz's production seems to hold a similar view that there's nothing to be gained from working outside the traditional idiom with this particular Wagner opera. It appears to be determinedly old-fashioned and out-dated, and perhaps the work itself is somewhat old-fashioned. Wagner's first great breakthrough towards finding his own through compositional voice is a far cry from the Grand Opera stylings of Rienzi written in the same year, but with its use of mythology, its ghost story setting and its theme of Romantic yearning, it's rather more successful on an allegorical level than as a realistic drama. Arguably, the music can do allegorical here better than a stage production can.

If it looks a bit creaky then, that's how the imperfect work itself could be regarded, but the staging and direction are more than just functional. The all-purpose set for the through-composed version of the opera takes place entirely on the ship, its boards curling up at the edges of the stage. The Flying Dutchman is all-consuming as far as the opera goes, as much as its myth drives everyone 'on board'. The direction is not without its dramatic touches and, critically - for all the effect of a ghost-story - it gets them right in all in the key moments. The Dutchman's appearance with his ghost crew is appropriately spooky, and his other appearances are usually accompanied with eerie lighting streaming up from under the deck. Senta's presence, as during the duet with the Dutchman, brings other transformations, and her descent into the blazing fire in the hold at the conclusion is dramatically effective.

What you also have here in this 2015 production, and often reliably find at Vienna, is a good, solid singing cast, even if none of them bring any new dimension to the work or the characterisation. Michael Volle is a superb Dutchman; tormented and driven, he not only sings wonderfully, he also sustains the mood and drama convincingly right through to the conclusion. Hans Peter König is a deep, resonant and secure Daland; Ricarda Merbeth demonstrates great control, delivery and projection; Herbert Lippert impresses in the role of Eric and Carole Wilson is a fine Mary. As part of the Wiener Staatsoper's Live at Home programme, Der fliegende Holländer consequently comes across reasonably well on the screen, but I would imagine with this kind of production it would be much more effective experienced live in the theatre.

Der fliegende Holländer was broadcast live from the Vienna State Opera as part of their Live at Home programme. The next live broadcast is Lev Dodin's production of Mussorgsky's KHOVANSHCHINA on 27th September (reviewed here in 2014). Details of how to view these productions live at home can be found in the links below.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video

Strauss - Arabella (Wiener Staatsoper, 2014 - Webcast)

Richard Strauss - Arabella

Weiner Staatsoper, 2014

Ulf Schirmer, Sven-Eric Bechtolf, Anne Schwanewilms, Genia Kühmeier,

Tomasz Konieczny, Herbert Lippert, Wolfgang Bankl, Carole Wilson, Norbert Ernst, Gabriel Bermúdez, Ulrike Helzel, Clemens Unterreiner, Daniela Fally

Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming - 18 December 2014

Arabella is a bit of a 'Zdenko' of an opera. It's posing as something that it isn't, a female opera dressed in men's clothes, and it's a little bit self conscious about it. It's a second bite at the Der Rosenkavalier cherry by Strauss and Hofmannsthal that somehow misses the point. Attempting to get back to the original sentiments and intentions that inspired their most enduring collaboration, focussing on the romance of period Vienna with its waltzes and operettas, attempting to remove much of the clever self-referentiality and longeurs of Der Rosenkavalier, something however gets lost in the process. It's as if the self-consciousness of the latter has somehow cancelled out the cleverness of the original idea. What you are left in Arabella is simply a beautiful opera, but not much else.

As composed by Strauss, with his wonderful facility for lush orchestration and his incredible writing for the female soprano voice, it is however also too easy to get carried away with the view that the creators might indeed have 'improved' on Der Rosenkavalier in some key respects. Without doing disservice to the undoubted qualities of Arabella as a lovely opera, Ulf Schirmer and Sven-Eric Bechtolf's production for the Vienna State Opera does however refuse to let Zdenka's deceit as to her true nature extend to a view of the opera itself. As Arabella puts it, so perfectly and without any falsity in the final line of the opera, 'nimm mich wie ich bin', "take me as I am". The Vienna production takes Arabella as it truly is, without all the usual adornments.

Key to this interpretation is the casting of Anne Schwanewhilms as Arabella and Tomasz Konieczny as Mandryka. Schwanewilms is an accomplished Straussian soprano, but she presents a very different side of the typical Strauss leading lady from the familiar lush silken romanticism and perfection you would find in Emily Magee, Rene Fleming or Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Her voice is not to everyone's taste, the tightness of her high notes and the less than smooth leap it sometimes takes to reach them nowadays is not ideal, but it's not idealised either. There's a more human quality to the emotional life of Arabella here than I'm familiar with. By the end of the performance, instead of being in awe at the beauty and brilliance of Strauss as a composer, in this production you really feel Arabella's pain and the meaning of those final words. Schwanewilms shows that there is a real heart behind Arabella as an opera, and all too often that's easy to miss.

Likewise, I tend to associate Mandryka with the warm, measured tones of a Michael Volle, and he is a marvellous interpreter of this role. Again however, his kind of interpretation can tend to add a little more sugar to the already honeyed tones of Strauss's orchestration. There's nothing wrong with that - I enjoy sinking blissfully into such performances - but it can be instructive to hear some other voices in the same role, and with Tomasz Konieczny giving a little more of a harder edge to the rough-mannered bear-wrestling wild man from the provinces, it does test how far Arabella can work as a dramatic opera in its own right. Perhaps it will reveal that the work is not quite perfect, but to me the little revelations and the laid-bare openness is better than smothering it with fake sentiment.

As Hugo von Hofmannsthal died during the preparations for the work, the libretto complete but - knowing Strauss and Hofmannsthal's working relationship - likely to be subject to further revisions, it's impossible to know how Arabella might have developed. As it stands, it's not as polished or as sophisticated a libretto as you might like, for all the surface beauty of the musical score. On the other hand, it could be that the operetta-like simplicity of the plot was precisely the intention and just the effect that the creators were striving towards. There's little intrigue to speak of until fairly late in the proceedings, what there is then is far from convincing in its developments and resolution, but it's not without some truth in its sentiments and it does touch on joy as well as the pain and heartbreak that comes in relationships. By the end, any kind of idealisation over the past, about love, is put aside in those final beautiful forgiving sentiments of the work.

Whether it perfectly captures everything that the creators intended is open to speculation, but in other respects Arabella is certainly moving in other direction that Strauss would explore, with more of the theatrical spoken-sung style that Strauss was heading towards in Intermezzo, as well as exploring more of the moments of beauty, wonder and joy that can be found in the nature of the domestic drama. Ulf Schirmer seems to be bearing this in mind with the conducting of Arabella and in this respect he's at one with the production and the singing. Director Sven-Eric Bechtolf and the Glittenberg's set and costume designs typically avoid the significant period of the work and update Arabella to around the time of composition, placing it in an Art Deco hotel and a jazz bar. It retains an air of sophistication then without the luxurious extravagance of the romanticised 1860s Vienna.

Aside from the qualities that Schwanewilms and Konieczny bring to the work, the singing elsewhere is similarly strong and complementary. Wolfgang Bankl and Carole Wilson make a good Count and Countess, Wilson rich lyrical voice in particular bringing new qualities out of Adelaide. Herbert Lippert's Matteo is bright and quite heldentenor-ish, while Daniela Fally makes quite an impression as Die Fiakermilli ought to, even doing the splits while singing. And what about Zdenko/Zdenka herself? As the motor behind the plot developments, twists and revelations, Zdenka is a vital character in the opera, and it couldn't be better cast than with Genia Kühmeier. For all the conflict between surface impressions and the harsh reality, there is a warm heart that beats in Arabella, and as the driving force that re-engages the characters with their better sentiments, Genia Kühmeier's Zdenka fulfils that role, as well as giving the production the warm heart it needs.

This performance of Arabella was streamed for live broadcast via the Wiener Staatsoper's Live at Home streaming service. There's an impressive line-up to be viewed over the next month, with DIE FLEDERMAUS on 31st Dec, DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE on 4th Jan, David McVicar's production of TRISTAN UND ISOLDE on 18th Jan and SALOME on 23rd Jan.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video

Verdi - La Traviata

Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata

La Monnaie, Brussels, 2012

Ádám Fischer, Andrea Breth, Simona Šaturová, Salomé Haller, Carole Wilson, Sébastien Guèze, Scott Hendricks, Dietmar Kerschbaum, Till Fechner, Jean-Luc Ballestra, Guillaume Antoine, Gijs Van der Linden, Matthew Zadow, Kris Belligh

Internet streaming, 15 December 2012

Let's not beat around the bush here, because this controversial new production of Verdi's La Traviata directed by Andrea Breth for La Monnaie in Brussels certainly makes its point directly and in no uncertain terms right from the outset.  Prostitution is a nasty business.  Courtesans, like Violetta Valéry in La Traviata may once have had a glamorous allure, but the reality was and is quite different.  The ultimate fate of any woman in those circumstances as the years and the lifestyle takes its toll, as they struggle to maintain appearances and simply survive, dependent upon the goodwill of others, is not a pretty one.  Giuseppe Verdi acknowledged this as far as censorship allowed in La Traviata - and even then it would not allow the work to be depicted as Verdi wanted as a contemporary drama - showing a 'fallen woman' unable to find love and happiness.  Director Andrea Breth goes much further.

Violetta's origins are shown right from the outset of the La Monnaie production during the Overture, the young woman being brought in from some East European country via a human trafficking operation and sold off to a prostitution ring.  The opening party scene of the work then retains the forced glamour depicted by Verdi's setting of the scene, while at the same time showing that the underlying reality is not so pleasant.  Semi-naked women pose glamorously from display windows behind a party that seems to be taking place in a high-class brothel, one that does a line in S&M, of which Violetta appears to be the Madame.  Amid the drunken revelry, one of the guests, wearing a plaster cast, his trousers half on and half around his ankles, vomits over one of the semi-conscious female guests.  At the end of the evening as Violetta ponders the shy advances of a new young admirer Alfredo ('Ah! Fors'è lui...'), one straggling reveller, in a state where she is unable to find her stockings and shoes, snorts some cocaine in the background.

That's not a typical way to depict Act I of La Traviata, but the brilliance of this production - a controversial one certainly that has stirred up a great deal of debate and which eventually forced La Monnaie to issue a statement with backing from other artists on the freedom of artistic expression - is that it remains musically and thematically faithful to the strengths of Verdi's writing and the subject, making it contemporary and realistic in a way that the composer himself was prevented from doing by the censor.  It's not out to shock through a controversial treatment as much as to shock the audience into understanding and relating to the reality that Verdi was trying to get across.  It's a measure of the success of the treatment that this version of La Traviata - a work that unfortunately has all too often become a glamorous star turn for a big-name diva - is one of the most powerful of recent years, revitalised and sparkling, modern and relevant.  It's what La Traviata is all about.

The modern revisionist elements and the controversial sexual content of the production elsewhere similarly manage to strike a near-perfect balance between modern relevance and fidelity to the original intentions of the work.  Scene 2 of Act I does little more than show an Alfredo so transported with love that he paints some graffiti love messages on a residence that currently has the workmen in.  It's the depiction of the revelry however in the pivotal Act II confrontation that is the most troubling part of the work - and it should indeed be a troubling scene.  Keeping to the theme of the unpleasant reality of prostitution and the exploitation of women, Breth uses strong imagery and behaviour that is reminiscent of Pasolini's film 'Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom'.  (No, that's not chocolate that one of the older guests is smearing over a young under-aged schoolgirl's face).  As a very difficult, near-unwatchable work about the dehumanisation and commoditisation of the human body, the corruption of wealth and power (money speaking just as much in Verdi's day as in the present), Salò is a relevant work to reference. It isn't taken to quite the same lengths in La Traviata here, but there's enough to make a point in the strongest way possible, and enough evidently, to cause quite a stir in the world of opera.

As troubling as all this is intended to be, the ultimate degradation of Violetta and women in her position should be just as forceful in the final Act, as Breth's vision proves to be quite as perceptive and capable of conveying the full intent and force of the underlying meaning with all the necessary impact.  Violetta's maidservant Annina is forced to pay the doctor through services provided on her knees, out on streets in a dark alley where her mistress is dying, wrapped up in plastic sheeting, as a heroin user shoots up further down from her.  It's as powerful an expression as you can imagine of the abject misery that is more than likely to be the fate of any aging prostitute who is seriously ill and has bills to pay.  It may not be the romantic death of a tragic heroine through consumption in the bedroom of an elegant Parisian mansion that is more commonly shown in productions of this opera, but this version gets more directly to the heart of what Verdi was writing about and it is actually relatively mild to the harsh daily reality of the violence, abuse and exploitation that takes place on the streets in real life.

While the dramatic and thematic concept has been carefully thought through and put across with fidelity and a sense of purpose, that's only half the battle with putting on La Traviata.  The singing and performance of the work itself needs to be just as considerate of the work, and fortunately the casting and the conducting of the La Monnaie orchestra by Ádám Fischer were perfectly in accord with the staging.  Early on, I liked how rhythm and tempo employed during Violetta's 'Sempre libera' matched Violetta's tentative exhilaration at the discovery of love, tempered at the same time by the first signs of her illness.  The judgement of each of the subsequent scenes however is just as sensitive and precise to the characterisation and the content, while also finding a way to make those diverse scenes and emotions flow naturally one after another.  A most impressive account.

The singing is more of a mixed bag, but by and large it worked hand-in-hand with the drama.  I always find it difficult to adjust to a new singer in one of the most famous roles in opera, but if Simona Šaturová didn't have the force or technique of some of the more notable sopranos who have sung the role, she nonetheless made a deep impression and gained greater credibility and strength as the work progressed.  All the roles were well-cast from the point of view of age and looks - that doesn't often happen - and if Sébastien Guèze wasn't the strongest singer who has ever sung the role, he reflected Alfredo's youth and inexperience well, and with some degree of distinction and personality.  Scott Hendricks wouldn't be my ideal Giorgio Germont, but he also fits in well with the production.  He can be a bit wayward and over-enthusiastic, but here he was relatively restrained, if still a little mannered and imprecise.  In his 'pura siccome un angelo', there's a neat twist where the father uses its seductive appeal as a come-on to Violetta - another instance of the abuse of power - and Hendrix makes it work.  It's just one example of how the relationships have been thought through here - the father/son relationship between Hendrix and Guèze also works well - creating a convincing and realistic dynamic, showing a fine and considered understanding of the characters and the situations they find themselves in.

There's a reason why La Traviata is the most performed opera in the world.  Verdi's magnificent writing is of course the primary reason.  The composer's later works are more sophisticated with greater dramatic expression and through-composition, but La Traviata is unmatched for the brilliance of melody and situational invention that brings its drama to life.  But it's also notable for the universality of the uncompromising sentiments the work and the music expresses on human relationships, on love, betrayal and mortality, that still have the ability to reach us and touch us through their relevance.  La Traviata was designed to show off Verdi's brilliance as a composer - and it does - but it was also intended to create a scandal in its frank depiction of the attitudes of a corrupt and hypocritical society towards "fallen women" who strayed outside the boundaries of what was deemed respectable.  This scandalous production at La Monnaie is a thrilling reminder of just how vital a work La Traviata remains.

The live broadcast of the 15th December 2012 performance of La Traviata is still available for free viewing on the ARTE Live Web site, without subtitles.  La Monnaie's recording of the production, taken from performances on the 15th and 18th December 2012, is also available for free viewing from their own website, with French and Dutch subtitles only.