Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata
Opera North, 2015
Oliver von Dohnányi, Alessandro Talevi, Anna Jeruc-Kopec, Victoria Sharp, Louise Collett, Ji-Min Park, Stephen Gadd, Daniel Norman, Peter Savidge, Nicholas Butterfield, Dean Robinson
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 18 March 2015
La Traviata might be the most performed opera in the world, but in some ways its popularity just makes it more of a challenge for an opera company to find a way of revitalising and renewing it in a new production. Aside from the musical resources and talent needed to perform it, there are also audience expectations to consider, which in my experience means that good productions of La Traviata are common, but great ones are rarer. Opera North's new production managed to strike a good balance between performance and audience expectations. It wasn't a particularly adventurous La Traviata, but it did eventually overcome the conventional mannerisms to get to the emotional heart of the work.
The opening Act however wasn't particularly auspicious. It did the decadent Belle Époque well, making Violetta's party look like an authentic out-of-control revelry/orgy that might have been more in keeping with the reputation of a courtesan than some stuffy formal dinner party. As the work can be rather circumspect about how Violetta's earns her keep, this is a good way of establishing that. Musically, it felt like we were just running through the numbers, but you can't blame Opera North for that any more than you can blame Verdi for writing such popular and memorable tunes. You have to give the audience what they expect, and Opera North did that at the outset and gave maybe a little more than that later.
At the very least, Act I made it abundantly clear that we had a stunning Violetta in Anna Jeruc-Kopec. She looked the part, sang with accomplishment and conviction, with feeling and personality. Ji-Min Park's Alfredo didn't make quite as much of an impact, but this is not his Act. That comes at both ends of Act II and there he handled all the emotional extremes of Alfredo's rapid fall from rapturous love to bitterness, anger and disappointment with a strong and emotive delivery. In between, we enjoyed Stephen Gadd's Georgio Germont, balanced between stern disapproval and some measure of sympathy for Violetta, with a warm, secure vocal delivery. His duets with Anna Jeruc-Kopec were delightful, Jeruc-Kopec demonstrating how good her performance was in those moments of intense distress.
From there on it there was less of the stop/start number playing broken up by audience applause. In La Traviata, that's usually a good sign, showing that the audience is less focussed on recognition of the arias and evaluation of the performances and has become caught up in the emotion and the drama of it all. You don't feel particularly inclined to applaud someone's life being taken apart on the stage, no matter how technically accomplished the performance and delivery. This is the magic that Verdi and Opera North manage to achieve with La Traviata, drawing the audience in with consummate skill and doing it almost imperceptibly.
While Alessandro Talevi's direction and production design didn't appear to make much of an impact then, it was actually very cleverly and carefully planned to match Verdi's musical construction. There's a musical arc to the work that opens contemplatively with (you can assume) Violetta alone in the overture, breaks into revelry at the Baron's party, builds up to rapturous love that then declines through the second half to a party that follows a similar downward trajectory, ending with Violetta again facing her mortality alone. Aside from the strong dramatic construction, Verdi's music also follows a similar coherent pattern that hits all the key points, with musical melodies/leitmotifs and phrases recurring in different guises that remind one of the earlier occasions they were played. It's masterful and highly effective.
Madeleine Boyd's set designs use a very simple means of ensuring that there's a visual symmetry that matches Verdi's musical construction. On the most basic level, there's a large bed in place in Act I that transforms into a jetty for Act II's country house scene and then into a stage and a gambling table for Act III. It's a simple device, but clever, ensuring that you don't view these Acts as random scenes, but can see the continuity between them. One scene reminds you of the other under different circumstances, much the same way that Verdi's score does. What lies behind those scenes is a little more difficult to establish here, but there is some effort to get beyond the traditional imagery and be a little more representative of the underlying emotions and sentiments.
An endoscopic image of, presumably, the tuberculosis bacteria working its way through her lungs, is visible during the overture, Violetta facing it, confronting her fate, the bright circular image transforming into a full moon outside during Act I. The blissful love scene of Act II - where wedon't actually see Alfredo and Violetta happy together - opens with Violetta contemplating the infinity of water meeting sky. In Act IV, the masked Parisian carnival revellers seated in tiers outside the window applaud Violetta's dramatic death scene.
None of this particularly adds to any great insight or understanding of the work and its message - it certainly doesn't highlight Verdi's scathing critique of social hypocrisy towards women who fall outside accepted boundaries - but it provides a distinct character for the production that doesn't stray too far away from the traditional reading. What's important is that, judging from the response of the audience, it works to draw you into the drama and the experiences of the characters. Rather more depends on how good the singers are in expressing those intentions, and if there was nothing unusual in how they were directed, the fine singing carried the full weight of the sentiments though to the devastating conclusion towards which the performance had been so imperceptibly and effectively building.
Giacomo Puccini - Madama Butterfly
Scottish Opera, Belfast 2014
Marco Guidarini, David McVicar, Elaine Kidd, Hye-Youn Lee, Louise Collett, José Ferrero, Marcin Bronikowski, Adrian Thompson, Jonathan May, Catrin Aur, Andrew McTaggart
Grand Opera House, Belfast - 21 June 2014
Revived in 2014, David McVicar's 2000 production of Madama Butterfly for the Scottish Opera proves to be a sensitive working of Puccini's opera. It's perhaps not quite as daring or radical as some of McVicar's later opera interpretations, retaining many of the familiar elements that an audience would expect to see in Madama Butterfly, but there are enough little touches to show that there's been serious attention given to the work and indeed to how it works.
The first thing you notice about the set for Scottish Opera's production is that while you have the familiar low-lying platform and screens for a Japanese house, the set is slightly askew in perspective. What this suggests is obvious, but it's emphasised by the sepia toned quality of the colouring, the deep colouration and the cut of the costumes set against them. This is not a kitsch stylised Madama Butterfly, or one that suggests nostalgia for a period and goes through the motions of playing out the melodrama, but one rather that is striving for a sense of realism for the sensibility of the period, as well viewing it from the perspective of those involved.
Careful attention to Puccini's score does indeed suggest that this approach is validated by the music itself and that it's not as syrupy, sentimental and manipulative as it is reputed. Madama Butterfly is certainly romantic but it's not romanticised; it still has those verismo characteristics in how it follows through realistically on the harsh consequences of such heightened melodrama. McVicar's direction doesn't need any little tricks to manipulate the power of the score itself, choosing rather to introduce a few little "delayed impact" touches that draw back from any heavy-handedness. The director for example tips the hand early in Act II to let the audience know before the traditional revelation that Cio-Cio San has had a child in Pinkerton's absence. The finale too is more sensitive than usual - yes it can be done with sensitivity - with the falling of the knife in her death scene not striking on the note but just before it, letting the actual impact of her death rather than the act itself have the final say.
A similar sense of sensitivity is there throughout. I've seen ballet dancers introduced into Madama Butterfly before (Sferisterio 2009), for example, but I've never realised how ballet-like Puccini's score is in its storytelling. There's no actual dancing in this production, but there are telling little touches that show that the director (or revival director) is actually listening to the score and taking dramatic, emotional and movement cues from the music. Discovering that Butterfly is fifteen, Sharpless observes, "The age for playing" ('L'età dei giuochi'), while Pinkerton boldly claims (in this translation), "Old enough for a wedding dress" ('E dei confetti'). Here the moment is marked with a little skip and twirl of Butterfly in Pinkerton's arms that gives a sense of both the youth of the girl and the romance of the sentiment.
This could have been played as sleazy, but that's judging it by today's standards and not with a sense for the period place or the time. It doesn't make it right of course, but the director knows that this will be borne out by later events and it doesn't need any directorial input to tell the audience how they ought to feel. The twirl is indeed picked up later, an echo of that moment of romance, but with subtle darkening of tone. Joseph Kerman ('Music as Drama') might disagree, but Puccini is a master of using music and melody to tell stories - he just might not do it according to "rules". I admit that it bothers me that the composer uses the same music or hints at the Humming Chorus in an earlier scene where Sharpless delivers Pinkerton's letter when there's really nothing that justifies connecting these two moments. (Don't even ask who is supposed to be singing the Humming Chorus!). It's hardly the correct employment of Wagnerian leitmotif, but Puccini has a wonderful ability to use the same music with subtle variations to tell us different things and make it work.
The strength of the direction here is that it trusts Puccini's music to be strong enough to tell the story in its own way and determine the precise tone. Marco Guidarini's sensitive conducting of the Scottish Opera orchestra does much to achieve that also, and the singing isn't bad either. From the first moment she walks onto the stage it's clear that Hye-Youn Lee is going to be an outstanding Cio-Cio San. Her voice rings high, her control is marvellous, and her characterisation as a young innocent girl is utterly credible in her acting performance as well as in the careful tone, delivery and timbre of her voice. Butterfly needs to be dazzling without seeming to be too commanding or experienced beyond her years, and Hye-Youn Lee gets that absolutely right.
José Ferrero is a little bit harsh on first appearance as Pinkerton, particularly in his scenes with Marcin Bronikowski's fine performance as the US Consul Sharpless, but he settles into the role very well when playing against Lee's Butterfly. With revival director Elaine Kidd behind McVicar's solid and perfectly attuned production and strong performances from the orchestra and singers, Scottish Opera's Madama Butterfly is a perfect demonstration of why this particular work remains one of the greatest and most popular works of lyric stage. When it's performed right, Madama Butterfly is simply as good as dramatic opera gets.
Giuseppe Verdi - Rigoletto
Scottish Opera
Tobias Ringborg, Matthew Richardson, Eddie Wade, Nadine Livingston, Edgaras Montvidas, Jonathan May, Louise Collett
Grand Opera House, Belfast - June 16, 2011
It’s hard to imagine how Verdi’s choice of Victor Hugo’s drama ‘Le Roi s’amuse’ could have caused such a stir in 1850 when it was used as the basis for his opera Rigoletto,
but censorship problems would dog the composer all through his early
career, partly due to the revolutionary political content of his work,
but also partly due to Verdi’s headstrong challenging of authority for
most of his life. One can understand to some extent that, even with the
arbitrary nature of censorship that would depend on where the opera was
being first performed (Verdi famously would subsequently withdraw Un ballo in maschera from Naples and take it to Rome after already being forced to make sweeping changes to its original incarnation as Gustavo III)
, that the authorities wouldn’t look too kindly upon the subject of a
libertine king being involved in scandalous affairs with the wives of
his courtiers and being subject to a death plot, but there are other
shocking events introduced to the opera stage in Rigoletto by
Verdi that we take almost for granted nowadays. A good production of
this opera however should ensure that it still has an impact today.
In the end, Verdi was forced to relocate Rigoletto
away from the behaviour of royalty in post-revolutionary France to
Mantua in Italy, but surprisingly, he was still able to make an obvious
allusion to the notoriety of Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. While
Verdi might not have got away with depicting a libertine king
consorting with prostitutes, a Duke indulging in that kind of behaviour
on a stage was scarcely less shocking, but no more so that the fact that
Verdi, who would be a great revolutionary in giving common people a
voice on the opera stage, would depict anyone at all taking part in the
rather sordid lowlife dealings that occur over the course of the opera’s
intensely dramatic three acts. This was just not the sort of behaviour
that one expected to see in an opera.
In my recent review of Macbeth, I mentioned how Verdi loved to mix political fire with the oil of relationship melodrama in his early works – Un ballo in maschera is another stormy later example of this style – but occasionally, the forumula changes in interesting ways, with Stiffelio for example combining a pot-boiling infidelity melodrama with religious rather than a political conviction and sense of duty. Rigoletto
is also fascinating for its variation on a theme, where the central
relationship under threat is not a romantic one (although it does have a
romantic aspect), but the relationship between a father and his
daughter. What is just as intriguing about the father-daughter
relationship in Rigoletto is that it is not idealised, and the
flawed character of Rigoletto can be seen as being fatally
over-protective of his daughter, Gilda. When there is a libertine like
the Duke of Mantua running around, whose reputation Rigoletto knows well
as his court jester and co-conspirator, one can understand his concerns
for the daughter that the brute of a man with many enemies has – and
they prove to be well-founded – but the downside is that his
over-protectiveness leads Gilda to react and assert her freedom of
choice in a rather dramatic and tragic way.
All of this adds spice to the characterisation, for while Rigoletto
is certainly a blood-and-thunder Verdi melodrama (quite literally with
the third-act bloodletting taking place during a thunderstorm), the
composer does overturn some of the usual conventions. If Rigoletto is
the standard clown, whose joking hides a sensitive disposition and whose
ugliness of his deformity disguises the beauty of his love for his
daughter, it’s his jealousy, his pride and his superstition (Verdi
reminding us regularly of the curse that has been placed on him by Count
Monterone for his complicity in the Duke’s crimes), that end up
distorting the genuine love he has for his daughter. On the other hand,
the villain of the piece, the Duke, manages through the privilege of his
position and his handsomeness, as well as a carefree attitude, to get
away with his infidelity and his use of people for his own pleasures.
Rather than predictably show that all men are equal, Rigoletto
emphasises rather the social inequalities that persist and how their
weaknesses can be exploited by the less scrupulous – seen here in the
form of the assassin, Sparafucile.
Whether these considerations really make Rigoletto
anything more than a melodramatic potboiler is however difficult to
justify, and indeed there’s little in Verdi’s score to suggest any
greater subtleties. As a pure example of the Verdi style however, it’s a
remarkably effective and superbly structured musical drama. Although it
is principally concerned with introducing the characters, showing their
temperaments and setting up the drama that is to later unfold, Act 1
does so most efficiently and has some fine musical moments and arias
that are to reverberate through the remainder of the opera. Scottish
Opera’s staging likewise tried to make this efficient as possible,
viewing it not in period costume or set in Mantua (with the Marco
Bellochio’s 2010 live telecast from Mantua still fresh in the mind, it
could hardly compete with the real-life locations), but more like an
old-fashioned cabaret or variety show, with Rigoletto in tights and
pottering across the stage like Max Wall. With traditional backdrop
stage-curtains and doors, chorus-line dancers and glitterballs, it set
the tone well in this respect, but, like Verdi’s composition, the real
test of the opera is in the second and third acts.
The pivotal second act, made up
of a series of stunning arias and duets, determines not only whether
the singers are up to the challenge, but also whether the production is
able to make it work in dramatic terms. It would be hard to get it so
wrong that the drama doesn’t work – Verdi’s score is lean and strong
enough on its own terms and the action well choreographed to pull it
through – but thankfully, the quality of the singing and acting in
Scottish Opera’s production was also up to the task. The three principal
roles are all challenging, but vital, and they all need to work in
common accord. Rigoletto’s lyrical baritone should ensure that it is
anything but a buffone role, and Eddie Wade managed to convey the
contradiction and confusion in the character’s make-up through his
acting and through his fine singing performance of the role. Edgaras
Montvidas came across as a little cocky and self-satisfied in his
delivery as the Duke, but that’s how he ought to be. There’s a little
room for early ambiguity which might not quite have been caught in his
relationship with Gilda, since he has to be persuasive enough for her to
trust him and fall in love with him, but elsewhere, and particularly in
the famous third act aria La donna è mobile, the tone and the
quality of the singing were excellent. It’s Gilda however that the opera
ultimately rests upon, and although a little inexperienced, that
innocent quality stood Nadine Livingston in good stead, making her
predicament and fate genuinely touching and almost credible (there are
limits to how convincing the denouement can be dramatically).
While it was harder to relate
the relevance of the staging – an open room with a leather sofa and a
glitterball littered with parts of showroom dummies in Act 2, a
tilted-box representation of the inn in Act 3 – to any overall theme or
concept, the choreography was fine and didn’t work against the drama.
Combined with the strong singing and Verdi’s powerful score, this
production hit all the right notes in all the right places, the darkness
of the operas themes and its daring treatment still powerful enough for
a modern day audience to in some way understand why it caused such a
sensation over 150 years ago.
