Verdi - La traviata (Buxton, 2026)

Giuseppe Verdi - La traviata

Buxton International Festival, 2026

Adrian Kelly, James Hurley, Alina Adamski, Tigran Melkonyan, André Heyboer, Frances Gregory, Amy J Payne, Harry Thatcher, Christopher Nairne, George Robarts, John Ieuan Jones, James Liu

Buxton Opera House - 22nd July 2026

As I mentioned in my other reviews of the festival, I was somewhat disappointed that the Buxton International Festival had made the decision to no longer perform exclusively rare opera, but times change and I accept that it's probably a commercial and economic necessity. The Buxton festival regulars are not getting any younger and new younger audiences are essential, so recognisable names like Verdi, La traviata and The Merry Widow might have a more popular appeal than something like the 1625 opera La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina (which I would note was a sell-out nonetheless). Still, there are attractions enough elsewhere in the music and book festival, in the Fringe and in the beautiful countryside of the Peak District, so I had no intention of going to see another La traviata, safe in the assurance that seats would still be filled without me. But you find you've seen all the Fringe you want to see, the legs have had all the hiking they can stand and there is an opera on with a few cheap seats left; so what is a committed opera-goer supposed to do?

I even knew what we were in for having seen the glossy productions shots. This was going to be a 'classic' traditional Belle Époque La traviata. There was one original touch, the set opening out from giant size jewellery box inspired by the one owned by Marie Duplessis, the inspiration for Alexandre Dumas' La Dame aux Camélias and the source for Verdi's Violetta Valéry in La traviata. That was the only distinguishing feature from a thousand other La traviatas. In Act I, the costumes were all formal dinner jackets and gaudy long satin dresses, lace frills and red velvet covered chairs; the set cluttered and messy.

There was nothing original in Act II either, Scene I at Violetta's country house was conventional and dull, and director James Hurley was unable to find any way of making the relationship between Violetta and Alfredo feel natural and authentic. There was little sympathy to be felt for the pleas of a lifeless Giorgio Germont who failed to provide any compelling reason why Violetta should abandon the relationship with his son. In Scene II of Act II, the gypsy girls and the matador routines - intrusive at the best of times, but definitely capable of being integrated better into the drama - also failed to excite or set up the struggle between fate and death to come in Act III.

Choosing to stage a frequently performed popular opera at Buxton is one thing, but having a good record of staging lesser-known Verdi operas in the past, I don't really know what possessed them to stage La traviata is such an unoriginal and uninspiring way. The characterisation was non-existent, the interactions lifeless, the direction going through the motions of operatic movements and mannerisms. There was not one original idea or interpretation worth anything here. Verdi had restrictions and censors to get past, so much of the underlying intent and implications about the activities of Violetta Valéry as a courtesan had to be glossed over, but there is no excuse for a director for the modern stage not bringing out the real underlying drive of Verdi's opera. When Violetta refers to herself as 'la traviata', it's even translated in the subtitles as 'lost woman', which could mean just doomed to die. With that La traviata becomes just a head-in-the-clouds impossible romance, the jealousy of a spurned lover, and a chance of happiness snatched away by terminal illness.

The remainder of the Buxton production remained bland. inoffensive and unambitious, saying nothing. La traviata deserves more and so much more can be found in this work, but there was no effort at all to be adventurous and explore the many themes within it. It doesn't need to be as radical as Andrea Breth's Salò-inspired 2012 production for La Monnaie in Brussels - but even the most recent productions I have seen of La traviata (Simon Stone for Paris in 2019 and Tatjana Gürbaca for Den Norske in 2018) before I decided I needed a sabbatical from this overly familiar opera for a few years, all had thoughtful probing ways to bring the subject of domestic abuse and public attitudes towards women who step outside accepted conventional social roles into a more recognisable modern context and thus rekindle the fire that drives the anger expressed by Verdi at the real underlying tragedy of women like Violetta Valéry.

Musically however, as familiar as La traviata is, it serves now and again to be reminded how good Verdi is in wringing the drama and truth out of every scene and emotion. This is Verdi entering into a new mature stage of his opera compositions, with the likes of Luisa Miller, Stiffelio and Rigoletto all showing a closer connection between subject matter and score, moving just a little further on past the conventions of Italian opera laid down by Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini and pushing Italian opera to new heights. Adrian Kelly, the musical director of the Buxton Festival may well have longed to conduct this Verdi opera for that reason - it's such a rich and dynamic score - and all of its qualities, pace, dynamic and rhythm were well handled, even if the stage direction suffocated any real emotion being expressed in it.

The singing also couldn't be faulted other than for the inability to make these characters feel real and not just stuffy cardboard figures going through the motions. Tigran Melkonyan was as good an Alfredo as I've heard, very much in the classic tenor mould. André Heyboer, through no fault of his own and more an issue of direction, was a dull, staid Giorgio Germont, the role sung well but unpersuasive. I was initially unsure about Alina Adamski taking on the role of Violetta for a single performance that was sung for the rest of the run by Alexandra Nowakowski. I would have liked a more mature voice and thought she started weak with some noticeable vibrato in her 'È strano! ... Ah, fors' è lui', but she shone in Act II and Act III, showing a superb range of voice and emotions for what is evidently a hugely intense and challenging role. Her 'Addio del passato' was almost heartbreaking ...almost, but not quite. This production would have needed far more build up for that devastating final scene to have impact. The closing down of the jewellery box should have been more effective, but it didn't quite cut it.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Verdi - Le trouvère (Wexford, 2025)

Giuseppe Verdi - Le trouvère

Wexford Festival Opera, 2025

Marcus Bosch, Ben Barnes, Eduardo Niave, Lydia Grindatto, Giorgi Lomiseli, Kseniia Nikolaieva, Luca Gallo, Conor Prendiville, Jade Phoenix, Philip Kalmanovitch, Vladimir Sima, Conor Cooper

O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 21st October 2025

No-one would consider Il trovatore a rarely performed opera, but the French version that Verdi reworked for the Paris Opera definitely qualifies for Wexford Festival Opera's focus on lost and scarcely known works. Being a lost and forgotten opera is no indication of lack of quality: there are many reasons why operas fall into neglect. It's a fate suffered even by many worthwhile Verdi operas and Verdi's French operas are always fascinating and all too rarely seen. That's definitely the case with Le trouvère, and Marcus Bosch's production for the festival managed to breathe a little bit of new life and meaning into a work that in its more popular Italian form has become quite stale.

In whichever version you present it however, Il trovatore is always going to be a problematic opera or at least a challenge. Aside from the overheated plot, the music has been overplayed over the years and there is a danger of it losing its impact through familiarity, or perhaps not losing its impact - since those famous arias and choruses still resound powerfully - but allowed to become too 'operatic' and detached from real human stories. Le trouvère, at the very least, provides an opportunity to hear the opera afresh, and indeed the Wexford production - for their 2025 Myths and Legends themed programme - managed to delve deeper beneath the surface storytelling and find some extra character in the work.

In comparison to some of the operas that Verdi rewrote or adapted for the Paris Opera, Le trouvère remains very much the familiar Il trovatore. With a few exceptions of course, not least the fact that the libretto was rewritten in French with suitable minor changes of music for the flow of the language, but perhaps the biggest revision or concession is of course the addition of a new 30-minute ballet sequence at the start of the third Act. In terms of musical character and plot melodrama however, Le trouvère is essentially the same as the Italian version. If you want to draw a distinction of differences between the two, there's not much new here to go on - unless you are Robert Wilson of course (but there was only one of those) - but the ballet sequence alone gives more scope to develop and establish a different character for the opera.

Director Ben Barnes rightly recognises that the medieval historical setting is hardly relevant to that, so much so that even though bringing it closer to our own time in this production to the period of the Spanish Civil War, it still has no significant impact or additional relevance, and in itself doesn't lend the opera any greater depth. Not that Le trouvère or Il trovatore needs it. It's a full-blooded melodrama, a Verdi blood and thunder melodrama, and all the impact is there in the dramatic writing, the tortured souls, the overwrought plot of hidden switched identities and fateful mistakes that take a shocking turn of events. Legends and stories should be on this kind of grand scale, but they can and should still retain the essence of humanity in them. It's there in Verdi, to some extent, and it helps if a director can find a way to bring that out.

The war context of each of the scenes is effectively staged, the images and impact of war on the people is evident, the Spanish setting well defined, but in terms of direction of the singers it was rather stiffly choreographed and all too often would fall back on opera mannerisms. A lot of this of course is 'in-built' in the opera, which amounts to a number of set pieces and star turns for the artists. Despite the strong passionate singing it was hard to feel any real human story in the fragmented structure, the stop-starting as the drama stopped to allow the singers to take their take their aria before entering back into the real (opera) world.

As good as the singing was, there was very little sense of any real interaction or drive to the love-hate drama between them. For individual performances of those classic roles however we had fine voices in Mexican tenor Eduardo Niave as Manrique and soprano Lydia Grindatto as Leonore. Giorgi Lomiseli sounded a little hesitant initially as Le Comte de Luna, but very much came into the as the drama unfolded. The most exciting performance came from Kseniia Nikolaieva's Azucena. It's a role of course designed to introduce that wildcard element of danger and unpredictability, seeking to find not so much vengeance as justice, and Nikolaieva made every one of her scenes count in raising the tensions. The rising star Irish soprano Jade Phoenix, who made a great impact in 2023 in Wexford in Marco Tutino's La ciociara, was underused as Inés but made an impression nonetheless.

There didn't appear to be much that was going to distinguish this Le trouvère from the many other productions of Il trovatore seen through the ages, but it was at the start of the third act when the inserted ballet music written by Verdi came into play and made a little more sense of it. Presenting it as a dream/nightmare of the Count, there was nothing particularly revelatory in the use of the generic Spanish Civil War footage mostly of troops marching and people on the streets, but with three dancers and some shadow play it effectively blended the human love story with the imagery of the wider war. What it captured was the weight of history, of long feuds between nations and mistrustful neighbours. It reminded you that Il trovatore or Le trouvère is not as excessive as you might think in its horror story or in the passions it evokes. Worse things happen in wartime, as the news reminds us every day now.

There are a number of Ukrainian refugees in Ireland at the moment (and scandalously on the very night I attended this performance, a mob of thugs was attacking a hotel of asylum seekers in Dublin) and many are finding success in Ireland as in the rest of Europe on the opera stage. That was the case with this opera's Azucena, Kseniia Nikolaieva, and I would imagine her own experiences and emotions would have fed into her performance. It showed. And if the production as a whole succeeded in relating those heightened Verdi rhythms, pacing and emotional overload of the brutality and suffering of war for the audience, imagine how much more it meant to the Ukrainian contingent. Without having to make any grand gestures - in an opera that usually calls out for grand gestures - Wexford's production of Le trouvère paid tribute in its own way by doing justice to those caught up in the horror of war.

External links: Wexford Festival Opera, Wexford Festival Opera Streaming on RTE Lyric FM

Verdi - Un giorno di regno (Garsington, 2024)

Giuseppe Verdi - Un giorno di regno

Garsington Opera, 2024

Chris Hopkins, Christopher Alden, Joshua Hopkins, Henry Waddington, Grant Doyle, Madison Leonard, Christine Rice, James Micklethwaite, Oliver Sewell, Daniel Vening, Robert Murray

OperaVision - 5th July 2024

One of the great things about opera, or an opera, is that it is never something done, recorded, wrapped up and archived, but always something waiting to be rediscovered and revitalised for a new age. An opera that is deemed a failure by the critics and public on its opening night two centuries ago can be revived and lauded as a masterpiece today. Similarly, an opera that once drew acclaim and sold out theatres for years can fall out of fashion or get lost and forgotten as musical tastes and style moves elsewhere. Verdi's Un giorno di regno, ossia Il finto Stanislao, the composer's second opera, was by any measure a complete failure, its initial run at La Scala in Milan in 1840 cancelled after one performance. Written in the period following the death of his wife and two children, the composer himself disavowed the work, but although it is unlikely to ever be considered a masterpiece today, that doesn't necessarily mean that we should accept an initial judgement of the work as the final word on it.

Another early Verdi opera Alzira (1845) was also judged by the public, critics and composer alike as a failure, but I've certainly seen one successful production (Buxton, 2018) that if not revealing it to be a lost masterpiece, at least shows it is better than the reputation that has clung to it, and is at least as good as any of Verdi’s early works. The difference between Alzira and Un giorno di regno however is that the former - albeit in an exotic location - is very much in the familiar Verdi idiom of a nation under an oppressive rule, while the latter is the composer’s first attempt at writing comedy, something he concluded he just wasn't very good at. It would only be at the end of his career over 50 years later that he would attempt comedy again in his final opera Falstaff, and at that stage there is little dispute that he was able to create a comic masterpiece.

But in 1840 it's clear that in Un giorno di regno ('A One-Day Reign', or 'King for a Day') Verdi was working outside of his yet to be fully established comfort zone. The plot isn't really worth relating in any detail or indeed following closely as the opera itself progresses. It involves a French officer Cavaliere di Belfiore "for complex reasons of state" impersonating the Polish king Stanislaus for the day as a guest at the home of the Baron of Kelbar, where a double wedding is soon to be held. His daughter Giulietta is to be married against her will to the financier La Rocca, separating her from the distraught but penniless Edoardo. The Baron's niece, the Marchesa del Poggio, is also to be married to a mystery groom since her lover Belfiore seems to have disappeared, but doesn't the king look suspiciously like him?… In the tradition of such tangled relationships and disguised identities, chaos and hilarity ensue. Except of course historically we know that wasn't the case.

Where you might expect a lightness of comic touch in the situations of the fake Stanislaus sorting out the romantic complications and making fools of the greedy rich elite, Verdi wades straightaway into Un giorno di regno with highly dramatic scoring, heroic proclamations and booming choruses. Any good production of an opera however (as with the Buxton Alzira) can choose to shift the focus over to the strengths of the work and mitigate against its weaknesses. You would presume that would have to be the intention and approach of any company brave enough to tackle Un giorno di regno, and that indeed is exactly what Garsington do here under the direction of Christopher Alden.

The strengths of this opera however are actually in the music, it's just that the weakness in the plot or perhaps it's the unsuitability and disparity between the tone of the music and the comic plot that makes things a little difficult for a director. But clearly not insurmountable and the way the Garsington production handles this is quite clever and entertaining. You can do a lot by playing up the visual comedy, all the actors well-directed here to puff up the absurdity of their characters - not in a parodic way (well, just a little), but rather as a broad comedy. It's not meant to be subtle; it is still early Verdi after all. As for the huge choruses, the early chorus of nationalistic pride here is depicted as the king's secret service bodyguards, dressed in black suits and sunglasses, all donning the colours of the national team to celebrate a news report of the Polish football team’s success. That fits perfectly. The TV news reports (the channel Forte News with its amusingly tag line of 'Loud. In 4/4 time. All the time.') are also very effective for filling in details of the plot that could otherwise be missed.

Character definition goes a long way to making this tongue-in-cheek update workable. When we are introduced to her, the Baron’s rebellious daughter Giulietta, who has been separated from her Edoardo for a more advantageous marriage and is thereby "suffering in mortal anguish", wears long unkempt threaded hair, is dressed in grungy tracksuit and flipflops, and has a 'Not My King' poster on the wall. Her rebellious nature is underlined (very heavily here) as she deals awkwardly with a delivery guy who has just delivered an online order of a self-assembly bomb and detonator. Giulietta is perfectly defined by the production design even before she sings a note, since you can't totally trust Verdi to get it right at this stage in his second opera. Musically it's wonderful, but the tone and libretto all feel wrong for the situation - Giulietta's ladies-in-waiting cooing a chorus (not that anyone coos in a Verdi opera) of "Why does sorrow cloud her angelic features?" - unless it's delivered with heavy sarcasm. 

The Garsington production doesn't stoop to making fun of such expressions, but sets Verdi's music more in character with the visual comedy of the production design than the silly/earnest 19th century libretto. It helps that the characterisation and singing performances are strong enough to carry it. In this scene for example, beautifully sung by Madison Leonard, her delivery is spot-on, striking the balance between sorrow and angry defiance; "Inclined to melancholy" she can pout with the best of them. Likewise the defining of the Treasurer La Rocca as a financier whose greed is turned against him when he seeks a more advantageous 'promotion' over the promise of marriage to the Marchesa fits nicely, as does the characterisation of the Baron as a ruthless oligarch and arms dealer. All have a surprising relevance to mocking the totalitaritechnocapitalist (© First Dog on the Moon) powers we see continuing to rise even in the aftermath of this 2024 production. Not so funny in real life, that bit.

Charles Edwards' set design for this 21st century visualisation of the opera is marvellous. The large stage at Garsington is employed to show-off a modern mansion of fashionable minimalism and expensive good taste, albeit one that doesn't necessarily extend to the choice of attire of those within. The Baron, CEO of Kelbar Defence industries, gives the king a boardroom presentation of the latest models of weaponry and helicopters, all ready to sell. Somehow it also helps to sell this adventurous scene of Verdi's where the business meeting on war goes on simultaneously with Edoardo and Giulia romancing in the next room. As an arms dealer moreover, the idea of a 'shotgun wedding' takes on a new meaning when the Baron learns that La Rocca has declined the offer to marry the Baron's daughter after the better offer that has been made by the pretend king.

All of this suitably amplifies the plot to rise to the level of the music, but inevitably it all becomes a bit silly: the opera and the production both. Or fun if you like, with Henry Waddington's Barone di Kelbar and Grant Doyle's La Rocca not only delivering superb singing performances, but also while engaging in comic slapstick and a duel as a food fight with spaghetti bolognese at five paces. There is plenty of entertainment like this in the singing and performances of Christine Rice as the Marchesa del Poggio and Joshua Hopkins as Belfiore, some of it distracting, some of it a welcome distraction that helps lift the slow movement towards reconciliation and resolution in the second act. It's never less than entertaining and as good a production as you are ever likely to see of Un giorno di regno.

External links: Garsington opera, OperaVision

Verdi - Don Carlo (Vienna, 2024)

Giuseppe Verdi - Don Carlo

Wiener Staatsoper, 2024

Philippe Jordan, Kirill Serebrennikov, Joshua Guerrero, Asmik Grigorian, Roberto Tagliavini, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Étienne Dupuis, Dmitry Ulyanov, Ivo Stanchev, Ilia Staple

ARTE Concert - October 2024

The intent of a director to modernise an opera production, particularly a work based (loosely) on historical sources but often dubiously dramatised for the original audience of its time, should in theory be to make it more relatable to a modern audience less in thrall (in theory) to wealth and power being held by a monarch. Some directors admittedly take that to strange places to impose their own vision and concept, but the intent must be to bring out the essential humanity and tragedy between the private lives of such figures and their public face. Don Carlos is just such a work where those matters are to the forefront and given a remarkable musical treatment full of ambition towards Grand Opéra by Verdi, here stripped back to its essentials in the Milan version, so one would hope that a director would confront those issues head-on.

At the raising of the curtain on the 2024 Vienna production directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, opening in a modern laboratory environment, a single person in the audience can be heard on the live ARTE transmission voicing their disapproval before a single note has been played, not even waiting to see what the director's intentions are, presumably since it doesn't look like it is going to correspond with how he personally feels it should be, showing no regard for what anyone else thinks. It's clearly someone either seeking attention or ignorant about the creative team involved at this production at the Wiener Staatsoper and the nature of opera itself as a modern progressive art form. Probably all of the above. Personally, I find Serebrennikov a director of interest from past productions of Wagner (Parsifal in Vienna, Lohengrin in Paris). And if the lone booer has any sense of shame, he ought to be humiliated at the conclusion that reveals itself as a thoughtful challenge to the fetishisation of the past set against the imperatives of the present.

Serebrennikov's version of Don Carlo is undoubtedly convoluted in its treatment, adding additional levels to an opera already filled with contradictions and contrasts. Using mirror images with actors in authentic period costume doubling for their counterparts in the present day, the director actually manages to present the attraction of the historical costume drama element of the work, while making the romantic and emotional content of the personal drama work on a contemporary human level, furthering and deepening those contrasts and contradictions that fire the drama. Despite the contemporary setting appearing to be of lesser significance than the war and political events within the royal court of King Philip II in the mid-16th century, Serebrennikov also successfully finds a way to make this distant and for many, obscure historical period meaningful and contributing to the turmoil faced by the figures in the opera. 

The laboratory that so appalled at least one member of the Vienna audience is a Costume Research Institute, where scientists are studying historical clothing and recreating the dress of the period of Philip II for their research. Elisabetta, a scientist in the laboratory, is troubled over her betrayal of Carlo by her marriage to his father, the chief director of the Institute, who is a bit of a tyrant. Working in such an environment, the workers, scientists and costume designers at the institute perhaps then see their own lives and troubles reflected in the past, and it's interesting to note when seen in this context how much attention is brought to and importance given in the libretto to dress, appearance and elegance. Rodrigo and Eboli in an early scene even have a moment to discuss the beauty and grace of French women, while projections on a screen above the stage show fetishistic images of the costumes detail and fitting. Combined the opera and this production show that there is limited benefit in trying to understand people in the past through the costumes they wear, that the truth about what went on is more likely to be reflected in how people behave now.

What the production doesn't do then is examine the political and historical conflicts of the 16th century, and I think most of us can live with that. For Carlos, Elisabetta, Philip and indeed Rodrigo and Eboli - and through them - we experience human conflict, their stoicism to contain deep feelings and emotions against a world that puts obstacles in their path, obstacles that don't necessarily need to include the conquest of Flanders. The horror of the war there is compared here to an Asian sweatshop being exploited for cheaply made clothing, the associated environmental catastrophe it entails all for the folly of keeping the human mannequins of the western world in the latest fast fashion. Consumerism as oppression. Carlo just wears a plain T-shirt with a 'Liberta' slogan attached with sticky tape. Rodrigo's states 'Save our Land' and those messages are what is really important and it is given real force here. Mainly thanks to Verdi's score of course, but the scenes and imagery are equally as effective, the auto-da-fé enacted here on climate change activists disrupting the historical fashion show in protest against the destruction the environment. The burning here is the burning of the planet.

To be fair to the lone booer (and the few hesitant followers who later join him at the end of Act III) it's a valid question whether an opera like Don Carlo really needs all this directorial intervention to work effectively, or is the director just using the composer's masterpiece to impose his own views? That's a judgement call, but it can be both. Don Carlos/Don Carlo is a difficult opera to make work effectively, in my experience of seeing many productions of it. With Verdi and this work in particular, the true challenge in presenting the work lies more often in how well you can cast singing roles that are technically and dramatically challenging. It's a factor that is just as essential to overcome any perceived weaknesses or flaws in the production or indeed the opera itself. A weak link can be particularly critical in Don Carlos. Saying that, there is little to fault here in either performance or the director's presentation, which is more nuanced than the brief description I've provided above. The historical models, for example, are dressed up in the first half and stripped back in the second as their true selves are revealed. There are many other touches to make the historical converge with the modern, including biographical notes of the real life figures added in projections, and a context that permits a wider examination of the use and abuse of power.

There are, as I said, no real weak links in the singing either. Indeed the roles of Carlo and Elisabetta are as good as you could expect. Asmik Grigorian sings Elisabetta with her usual conviction and skilled dramatic interpretation. Joshua Guerrero's Carlo is also well-characterised and sung, again with the necessary ability and conviction. Eve-Maud Hubeaux's Princess Eboli is excellent, her confession to Elisabetta in Act III intense and tragic. There are deep emotions stirred on all sides, love and betrayal of friendship valued over position is an important aspect of the opera and this carries weight in all the principal roles. As such Rodrigo’s role is important too and Étienne Dupuis brings that out well in his performance. Only Philip II perhaps suffers from the direction. You don't get a sense that he really has anything grand at stake as he would were he genuinely a King under the yoke of the Catholic church's Inquisition while he is also facing a personal humiliation in his love life in his 'Ella giammai m'amò'. Roberto Tagliavini's singing isn't able to bring out the heaviness of the head that wears the crown.

Don Carlos/Don Carlo, in whatever incarnation, is one of Verdi's greatest works, or at least the one I always find that has real meaty issues as well as intriguing flaws and challenges that have to be creatively confronted by a stage director. It is also, despite the many revisions and versions, musically one of the composer's finest works, through composed but incorporating utterly beautiful melodies (although personally I'm less fond of the Spanish flavours) and wonderful attention and attunement to character detail and expression. It sounds absolutely marvellous here under Philippe Jordan and the Vienna Orchestra. If there were any sceptics left in the audience by the time the devastating conclusion was reached, they were drowned out by the deserved applause for a thoughtful and powerful account of this tremendous opera.

External links: ARTE Concert, Wiener Staatsoper

Verdi - Ernani (Buxton, 2024)

Giuseppe Verdi - Ernani

Buxton International Festival, 2024

Adrian Kelly, Jamie Manton, Roman Arndt, André Heyboer, Alastair Miles, Nadine Benjamin, Jane Burnell, Emyr Lloyd Jones, Theo Perry

Buxton Opera House - 17th July 2024

"Please be aware: This production involves death, blood, themes of physical and mental abuse, torture and suggestion of gun violence"

If you didn't know which opera you were going to see, the trigger-warning signs placed around the Buxton Opera House would at least give you a reliable hint that it could only be an early Verdi opera. In fact it could be any early Verdi opera. In this case it is indeed one of those rarely performed works, Ernani, with Act II just before the interval resounding to cries of "Sangue e vendetta!" ("blood and vengeance!"). I wonder how they managed without trigger-warnings in Verdi’s time when this was first performed in 1844. Perhaps that's why there was so much oppression and war being waged by authoritarian rulers and dictators back then, whereas now ...oh, hold on…

Sangue e vendetta indeed, there is not a lot of subtlety in early Verdi, but as was noted recently in the early Verdi compilation opera Rivoluzione e Nostalgia at La Monnaie in Brussels, there is quite a lot of rousing music and singing and a lot of full-blooded drama in these works. Engaging plots not so much, in fact with three powerful men struggling for the hand of one woman, Ernani is not unlike the situation that La Monnaie developed for their early Verdi mixtape, in as much as it's fairly standard plot fare. Attila, I seem to recall, has much the same situation. It's tempting to compare this one with Don Carlos, which itself isn't perfect, but it shows up the vast difference between early and later Verdi. One need only compare how Don Carlo (later to become Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor) here reflects on power in his aria at the tomb of Charlemagne with a similar tomb scene in Don Carlos (over the tomb indeed of Charles V) and the difference in emotional torment and soul searching is apparent.

Not that it matters greatly as far as Ernani is concerned. Plot and character isn't everything. Well, it is perhaps for most other works of opera and drama, but Verdi is a special case. In some respects the composer is tied to tradition and to the taste for historical melodrama of the day, to characters making wild romantic gestures and binding themselves unforced into grand promises that only serve to make the plot even more dramatic. There is only one thing that can make that even more dramatically powerful (powerful doesn't necessarily mean credible) and that’s Verdi's music played at full tilt.

And he really goes for it in Ernani, as does the Opera North orchestra under conductor Adrian Kelly at the 2024 Buxton International Festival. The music is not as heavy-handed as you might think, but never passes up an opportunity to throw in a huge chorus with a punchy flourish at the end. The main feature that Verdi also relies on is the need for singers of an exceptionally high standard for the four of the demanding central roles. You get that right and you have something powerful on your hands, but weaknesses in any of those roles and the whole thing falls apart. There is no question that the exceptional cast assembled here were as good as you could hope for this opera a fighting chance of success, but the options for the director Jamie Manton were limited and despite the strengths elsewhere in the music and the production, he wasn't able to find a way to make it work successfully as a drama.

Considering what he had to work with as a plot, it seems like a reasonable idea to focus instead on character and the interaction between the principal figures of the drama. It's an option I suppose, but it turns out not to be a particularly fruitful avenue to explore. The plot and the motivations of the characters are not complicated as much as a bit daft, or daft to non-existent, certainly in the first two acts. Somehow all three pretenders for the hand of Elvira all contrive to be in the same place as the unfortunate lady is being prepared for marriage, and they have a big row about it. That's about the height of the first half of the work. 

Acts III and IV involves some contrived twists around a secret society of conspirators,  the secret identity of the bandit Ernani being in reality Don Juan of Aragon, a king in disguise and an unusual vow where Ernani promises to kill himself on the sound of a bugle. You would hope that he doesn't come within earshot of just some random bugler. If it wasn't for the fact that they are notable medieval historical figures all squabbling for the hand of the Duke's niece (including the Duke himself), it would be a banal romantic drama. Which, since it's not being played historically in this production, I'm afraid that's how it comes across. It's undoubtedly hard, but with Verdi's score surely not impossible to make these figures something a little less one-dimensional.

The stage production design relied on dramatic lighting which was highly effective for the charged scenes, the all-purpose triangular recessed set serving well for bedroom, court and crypt. Not related to any period however, it felt rather generic and it didn't place the drama into any kind of meaningful context that would make it feel relatable or even credible. That's a tall order I must admit, and based on a previous viewing of this opera in a more traditional setting it may indeed be an impossible ask, but it didn't get a lot of help in direction and character that lacked the conviction to match the overheated drama.

The singing and dramatic performances however were not lacking in any way. Let's start with the chorus as they play a major role in ramping up the tension throughout. They were in fine voice here, providing those big moments to lift the work up above the banal individual romantic and personal dramas. All too often in these Verdi works it's the female soprano in an extremely demanding role that is often the weak link, but that certainly wasn't the case here. Nadine Benjamin was simply outstanding as Elvira with a big voice and fiery delivery. Roman Arndt was terrific as Ernani, presenting a strong pairing with Benjamin's Elvira. The the other two pretenders for her hand also have to be made of stern stuff, as Don Carlo is a king and Don Ruy Gomez de Silva is a duke, both needing to be formidable challengers to Ernani. André Heyboer and Alastair Miles ensured that was the case.

Musically, this was a thrilling account of Ernani, certainly worthwhile to demonstrate the often underrated qualities of Verdi's early work, particularly when you have singing and musical direction of this calibre. Unfortunately, Francesco Maria's Piave's libretto for this old-fashioned romantic melodrama does not hold up well, and despite his best efforts of the director Jamie Manton, there is little depth of human character to be found in these stock historical caricatures.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Verdi - Rivoluzione e Nostalgia (Brussels, 2024)

Giuseppe Verdi - Rivoluzione e Nostalgia

La Monnaie, 2024

Carlo Goldstein, Krystian Lada, Enea Scala, Vittorio Prato, Justin Hopkins, Nino Machaidze, Gabriela Legun, Hwanjoo Chung, Scott Hendricks, Giovanni Battista Parodi, Dennis Rudge, Helena Dix, Paride Cataldo, Saténik Khourdoian

OperaVision - 29/30 March 2024

'What will remain of our time?', a man called Giuseppe ponders at the start of Rivoluzione, a two-part opera compilation of selected arias from early Verdi operas created for La Monnaie in Brussels. Well, the music of Giuseppe Verdi remains a cornerstone of the opera repertoire 150 years after his major works, suggesting that his operas still have something that speaks to us today, but what of the lesser early works? Will the ideas expressed in those works from the 'galley years' spent honing his craft still have something to say in the future. That seems to be the question that lies at the heart of La Monnaie's early Verdi project, and if the answer is not clearly resolved in the way that the project might have hoped, it certainly suggests that Verdi's early operas have qualities that ensure that they will be around much longer than Rivoluzione e Nostalgia.

Still, there is merit or at least purpose in such a project, all of the excerpts from these two back-to-back operas being selected from Verdi's first sixteen operas, most of which in the main are rarely performed. The reasons for the lack of new productions of these works is open to debate. You could argue an opera house has to consider the commercial aspect; why put on Alzira when you have the name familiarity of a new La Traviata or Aida to bring in the punters? This suggests the other argument that indeed the early 'galley years' works are inferior, but inferior to what? To later Verdi unquestionably, but on their own merits the works can be thrilling pieces of crowd-pleasing operatic drama. The quality of the musical composition and hints of the greatness of the later Verdi can be found there - as this project ultimately proves - but the plots of those works are, not to put too fine a point on it, somewhat hokey pot-boiler melodramas. The challenge for Rivoluzione e Nostalgia is whether it can cannibalise those great moments from Giovanna d’Arco, Nabucco, Stiffelio etc. and put them into a new context with a coherent plot in order for us to see their continued value and relevance.

There's an argument then for taking the works out of their original dramatically and psychologically dubious context and applying them to a newly written drama that presents the musical qualities in a better light. It's not as if this is anything new in the world of opera, which has an ancient but now not so common tradition of the pasticcio opera. I can't think of any pasticcio that draws exclusively from the work of one composer, although some lost Vivaldi works have been reconstructed from his other compositions and Rossini is well-known for cannibalising his own works to make new ones. I recall that not too long ago a ballet was made entirely of Verdi's instrumental music and overtures, undoubtedly for similar reasons to this project, ie. the music is too good to let languish. If that's the case then the idea of an early Verdi pick 'n' mix is a good one, but - again not to put too fine a point on it - unfortunately the execution fails in this La Monnaie production of Rivoluzione e Nostalgia.

It's arguable whether it's a good idea to start the first part Rivoluzione with 'Patria oppressa' (from Macbeth). You can't make a bigger statement about the proposed subject than that, and at the same time demonstrate the quality of Verdi's composition, but the new plot context for this piece doesn't really stand up to such a moving chorus. The context for it is a video sequence showing random footage of life in the late 1960's that is to be set into turmoil by conflict and war around the world, ordinary people affected by events in Vietnam and Algeria, initiating student protests in many major cities around the world, but specifically here in Italy, presumably Rome. Starting off on such a note as 'Patria oppressa' however, it is going to find it hard to sustain the momentum and build on that, and indeed instead of a struggle between the rulers of nations and their people, Rivoluzione turns its focus on a romantic tug-of-war between Laura and Carlo and Lorenzo, with her brother Giuseppe adding to the sense of outrage. With Laura a bourgeois girl, the daughter of the chief of police falling in love with Carlo a common shipyard worker, the struggle becomes one of crossing class boundaries and accusations of being a traitor to the ideals of the proletariat.

The shortcomings of the resetting of the plot aside, there are other weaknesses in the execution of Rivoluzione. Inevitably, considering the cut-and-paste method, there is no through-composition, the cabalettas, arias and choruses drawn from the likes of Ernani, La battaglia di Legnano, I masnadieri and Luisa Miller separated by filmed segments of ponderous portentous spoken dialogue. The names of the characters of Laura and Carlo are defined by the first two arias taken from Luisa Miller ('Lo vidi e'l primo palpito' and 'Sacra la scelta è d’un' consorte'), but elsewhere names and words are subtly changed to reflect the new context, referring to the bourgeoisie and barricades (I masnadieri for example retranslated from 'brigands' to 'agitators') removing references to the diverse nationalities of the different operas.

Dancers are used to bring another element to the stage production, enlivening the stage drama with energetic modern jerky movements. They don't do much to take the heat out of Verdi's blood and thunder melodrama, but instead emphasise every single note, pushing the emotional charge of the scene far beyond its limit, certainly further than a romantic love-triangle plot between revolutionary students can sustain under the excuse that 'Il personale è politico', the private is political. Say what you like about the plots of Verdi operas, but at least they aimed for grand historical drama that merited such musical forces. The plot of this one is too slight and insignificant to bear such weight. Bizarrely - something I've never felt about Verdi operas or even any previous production - but removed from their original context, the confected love-triangle struggle feels more like a macho power struggle than the typical Verdian questions of conflict between love, family and duty.

What is indisputable however is that musically, Rivoluzione is outstanding. Nino Machaidze as Laura is sensational and Gabriela Legun as Cristina no less impressive in the supporting soprano role. Enea Scala's Carlo is a robust Verdi tenor, dramatic and lyrical, Vittorio Prato's Giuseppe and Justin Hopkins' Lorenzo less so, but capable nonetheless. When you have singers of this quality, you can admire the individual pieces from these scarcely performed Verdi operas and the passion that underlies them, even if the dramatic context in their new setting remains flawed. Across two parts totalling 5 hours of this diptych, you can imagine that the cumulative impact might be a bit much. So after the three hours of Rivoluzione I hoped for a little respite in Nostalgia.

'What will remain of our time?' Well, the question that the 1968 setting of Rivoluzione failed to establish in any significant way is explored in Nostalgia, inevitably to diminishing returns. Laura has disappeared, we later discover now dead, but there are video documents of the student days of the 'revolutionaries' who ended up betraying their cause and the revolution, accepting pay-offs and now - reuniting in a plush art gallery to view Carlo's latest barricade installation piece (which is actually rather good) - feeling somewhat guilty about their acceptance into the bourgeois world of art and commerce. There is at least some respite from the onslaught of full-throttle Verdi in Rivoluzione, and great pleasure to be found in the musical choices that include the overture from Jérusalem, an aria from Il corsaro, a romanza from I due Foscari, scenes from Macbeth and - essentially - the chorus of the Hebrew slaves 'Va pensiero' from Nabucco as a finale.

Relying on Macbeth for a large portion of Nostalgia however reveals some weaknesses in the singing. Macbeth is a bigger role than Scott Hendricks can manage, Carlo unconvincingly transforming from tenor Enea Scala into a baritone seemingly for this purpose. Helena Dix is more capable, but not convincing in the Banquet scene or the sleepwalking scene (sung bel canto style with references remaining to Banquo's ghost). Compared to the other rare Verdi operas drawn on, Macbeth is also perhaps too familiar to view in a new context. Dramatically, on the basis of being not much more than haunted by past crimes of betrayal to 'the cause' - and even then it's the banal gossip of romantic betrayal that dominates - it's not strong enough to erase memory of the original when the filmed segments between the arias and choruses fail to merge into anything that resembles a plot. Hendricks, never a Verdian baritone, I'm sorry to say fairly murders 'O vecchio cor, que batti' from I due Foscari. Only Gabriela Legun really stands out again here as Virginia, but even her 'Egli non riede ancora' from Il corsaro lacks a convincing context and emotion that a genuine plot and true characterisation might bring.

Despite the dramatic weaknesses of the diptych, its overextended length, the inconsistency of the singing and its failure to amount to a coherent opera, there is nonetheless some merit in this production of Rivoluzione e Nostalgia. Aside from reminding us that there is a treasure trove of musical richness in the rarely performed first sixteen operas of Giuseppe Verdi, it also proves that opera is not primarily about the music or the singing, but that the drama is the critical element. Without a meaningful dramatic, philosophical and human context, the singing and music alone is meaningless, or at least diminished. There are of course exceptions to any rule, just as there are exceptional productions that prove the value of many operas, including many of the early Verdi operas, thought to be lacking in substance. Just reviving any one of them (yes, even Alzira is redeemable) would have been preferable to creating Rivoluzione e Nostalgia, but as an opportunity to highlight that there is much more to Verdi than La Traviata and Aida, or indeed Don Carlos and Otello, it makes at least a semi-convincing case. 

External links: La Monnaie-De Munt, OperaVision

Verdi - Nabucco (Geneva, 2023)

Verdi - Nabucco

Grand Théâtre de Genève, 2023

Antonino Fogliani, Christiane Jatahy, Nicola Alaimo, Saioa Hernández, Riccardo Zanellato, Davide Giusti, Ena Pongrac, Giulia Bolcato, Omar Mancini, William Meinert

OperaVision - 17th June 2023

At my last count I have written reviews of 100 Verdi opera productions, probably more than necessary on La Traviata, Rigoletto and Aida, although I seem to see Don Carlos, Simon Boccanegra, Otello and Macbeth featuring more regularly now. Nabucco I've covered only once in the last 15 years (at Vienna in 2015), but it doesn't seem to be one quite as often performed these days. Which is surprising in some ways but - having watched this Geneva production - not surprising in others. It's surprising since it is 'pure opera' (which is a bit of a vague claim, but I'll try to clarify that), but also unsurprising in the way that it's hard to do anything with it that will allow it to connect with a modern opera audience - if that's not a contradiction with the assertion that it is pure opera. In any case, it strikes me that at least as far as the Brazilian filmmaker and director Christiane Jatahy handles it, the Geneva production of Nabucco comes across as little more than abstract 'pure opera'.

By pure opera, I of course mean classic Italian opera and Verdi is perhaps the greatest proponent of that form of opera, although claims could also be made for Rossini leading the way before him and Puccini taking it further after him. And in those early works at least, it's pure opera in as far as adherence to the conventions of the Italian opera style, where the tailoring of a familiar arrangement of numbers, arias, cabalettas, choruses were arguably more important - or at least as important - as any narrative coherence, message or personal style. Verdi of course had plenty of substance to say and frequently ran into trouble with the censors for his outspoken attacks on religion, politics and his stance on Italian independence, but the emphasis tends to sit more on the individual personal and familial conflicts within the greater scheme of the abuse of power. You can see this in Aida, La Forza del destino, Simon Boccanegra, I due Foscari and many others. It can also be seen in the shift of emphasis in his Shakespearean adaptations, and even the ambitious Don Carlos doesn't quite overcome those challenges of striking the right balance.

It's a format nonetheless that clearly inspired Verdi and gave the composer great material to work with, even when the plot development, weak libretti and inadequate character development forced to meet the conventions of grand opera numbers and expectations of a conservative opera audience didn't allow for any deep exploration of the human experience. Only latterly in his career would Verdi find strong librettists like Arrigo Boito and be presented with material that could measure up to the quality of his musical talent. Nabucco belongs to the power and passion of his early works, never quite satisfying, never really giving the audience much of a challenge. There is certainly plenty for the composer to get his teeth into however in a charged dramatic situation, but it's a lot of sound and fury, signifying not very much. 'Va, pensiero' notwithstanding.

Having failed to find any enthusiasm to put myself through a streamed viewing of Aida at the Bavarian State Opera, abandoning it after 'Celeste Aida' (never a favourite Verdi opera), I thought it might be better watching a Verdi opera I was less familiar with. The Geneva production of Nabucco up there on the OperaVision site seemed ideal, and even though I've only watched the opera once in the last 15 years, I was sure I could follow it without needing to read the synopsis. It's an early Verdi opera after all - written in 1841, only his third opera - and surely not too difficult to follow, particularly as it looked like this production has no intention of being restricted to a Biblical setting. I was however a little bit lost in the opening scenes, but fully enjoying the performance and presentation for the impact alone. This is what I consider to be pure Verdi opera; a lot of highly charged scenes with expression of high romantic melodrama in a setting of religious, political or national conflict. Without really knowing what is at stake, it's enough just to see how the main characters express their struggle to put across the power of the work.

And in some respects that is largely all that the Geneva production does. Avoiding the Biblical Nebuchadnezzar period, it's the kind of production style I personally enjoy; an abstract and timeless spectacle, finding a fairly unique way of presenting a work, not trying too hard to make a statement. It's early Verdi on fire, it's Nabucco and that's enough, a blockbuster writ large for the big screen. The stage production makes use of a camera for live projection of close-ups, a mirror hangs over the proceedings and a shallow pool of water with spotlights permit filmed footage and other special effects. A large cloth robe is draped over the stage that Abigaille will wrap around her in dramatic and regal fashion. The charged situation spills over from the stage, with chorus members arising out of the audience in the stalls, enveloping the theatre in the full Verdi.

All this is very impressively supported by musical direction of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Antonino Fogliani, who captures the straightforward force of the work, but also its dramatic precision. This is an opera and a production to just give yourself over to, which is often what you have to do with Verdi and the rewards can be great. The musical qualities however shouldn't be underestimated, nor the challenges of the singing roles. When you have the right kind of singers who have strength, force and precision, as well as the ability to emotionally engage with these highly charged arias and scenes, the impact is like nothing else. Nabucco offers many such opportunities, and the are well taken. For the Verdian who has tired of the overplayed main three (La Traviata, Aida, Rigoletto), Nabucco (and Macbeth) offer new life for those who just want to experience the classicism of Italian opera in its purest form.

Maybe it's just lazy to say that the production offers nothing more than this; there has clearly been great effort put into every element, from the set design to the orchestration, casting and the singing. After watching the stream, I went back and checked the synopsis, read some background information, listened to the director's presentation and reconsidered the production in that light, but it didn't enlighten or improve my opinion of what I had seen. I enjoyed this purely as a - for me - not-so-familiar Verdi opera given a thoroughly skilled and entertaining performance and presentation. The nature of the modern production in everyday dress allows others to see contemporary application of the themes brought out by this work if they so want to, but you are not obliged to do so.

That's the nature of opera. It's not just notes on a page, it only lives in the moment it is performed, and a modern audience with greater familiarity of the world of opera and history in the following almost 200 years will have an entirely different response to a work like Nabucco than the audience who first saw it performed. Each individual will also respond to an opera differently, speaking to them in different ways. In fact, often it's more successful when a production allows room for personal identification and connection, rather than imposing a strict idea or over-worked concept. Verdi's full-blooded musical scores for the subjects in his early operas often go for the heart rather than for the head, but dealing with basic human emotions and struggles, they are just as capable of touching as deeply with as the grander concepts and philosophical pursuits in Wagner's operas.

Rather than impose a reading beyond the idea of an oppressed people in the abstract, Christiane Jatahy's cinematic techniques served at least to highlight the impassioned performances of the cast. I particularly liked the character that Saioa Hernández brought to Abigaille, with a performance that could pin you to your seat, fully living up to the challenging role Verdi had composed for Giuseppina Strepponi. Having seen her singing impressively in the otherwise weak Verdi opera Attila, this comes as no surprise. There were solid performances for the reliable Italian Verdian singers Nicola Alaimo as Nabucco and Riccardo Zanellato as Zaccaria. Ena Pongrac made a fine impression as Fenena, and Davide Giusti also delivered with the requisite charged singing performance. An excellent cast all-round and, of course, the all-important chorus impressed with their contribution to this work. 

It was conducted well by Antonino Fogliani, who also composed a brief closing intermezzo before a final repeat acapella version of 'Va, pensiero' from the chorus placed all around the Grand Théâtre de Genève. Perhaps they felt the opera lacked the right kind of impact at the finale - and certainly the final act doesn't measure up to the first half of Nabucco - but if you want the audience to leave the with a lasting impression of what it means to live oppressed but unbowed, with Verdi's stirring composition ringing in your head, this serves very well indeed.

External links: Grand Théâtre de Genève, OperaVision