Cover image: Joshua Dennis (Alfredo), Corinne Winters (Violetta), and cast members of Seattle Opera’s La traviata. (Photo: Philip Newton)
The current production of Verdi’s La traviata at Seattle Opera (running through January 28) tightens the action, reduces the set almost to nothing, and brings the three main characters—Violetta, her lover Alfredo, and his father—to stark relief. Traviata is the tale of age-old hypocrisy in the face of prostitution: the woman is someone to be deplored even as she is made use of and courted, while the man who uses her is unassailable and “just doing just what men do”.
Verdi originally wanted to set the opera in contemporary times but the powers that be in Italy felt it was too much for its opera cognoscenti to face and it was put back a century and a half, sufficiently distant for opera-goers to feel comfortable seeing it.
This production, directed by Peter Konwitschny, is set in contemporary times. It could easily be the story of a high-class call girl in New York and the people who party with her and her colleagues: wealthy corporate bosses or the scions thereof. The disease Violetta contracts and is dying of is meant to be tuberculosis. Today it could be AIDS or any other nasty condition contracted through sexual congress.
It was a brilliant idea to remove the distractions of a set, in order to concentrate on the characters. There are only the stage curtain and succeeding receding curtains on the stage, all in lush red and drawn slowly to the side or back again, as symbols perhaps of the stages the characters pass through, in reality or in their minds. Otherwise there is only a ubiquitous chair and, at one time, some books on the floor, and another chair.
Director Konwitschny chose to omit an intermission and tauten the opera, though it might have worked better to have that intermission, traditionally put between the flight of Violetta from her frenetic Parisian life and the rural idyll she shares with Alfredo three months later. Without the intermission, the change seemed too sudden and for those who are not familiar with the opera, a bit bewildering.
The cast in Saturday night’s opening, included soprano Corinne Winters as Violetta Valery in her Seattle debut, tenor Joshua Dennis as Alfredo (also in his Seattle debut), and baritone Weston Hurt as Alfredo’s father Giorgio Germont, reprising the performance he gave here in 2009. The young and slender Winters looked and acted the role superbly, wearing successively black, then white, then red wigs; and in her smart red cocktail dress and heels to start, then jeans and a shirt in the countryside, and a slinky black number on her return to Paris and parties. She has the voice too, beautiful, expressive, and able to sing softly and expressively including on the highest notes, as she gradually fades to death in the last act.
As Alfredo, Dennis is portrayed as a young, naïve nerd, relatively new to Paris—though he has loved Violetta from afar for a year so he can’t be that new. He appears dragged to the opening frenetic and formally dressed party of Violetta’s “friends” and hangers-on, wearing khakis and a cardigan sweater, wearing glasses and carrying a book. He comes across later as wimpish and indecisive, okay as long as his rose-colored spectacles don’t get ripped from his eyes. Dennis too can act well and sing expressively though there were many times when he seemed to be just under the note.
Much more obviously than in other productions, his father Germont is delineated as a controlling, manipulative parent, charming and generous only after he has got his way, menacing in soft tones before that. Again, this is a fine singer. Seattle Opera general director Aidan Lang has, in the short time he has been here, shown himself a master at choosing voices which fit the roles and satisfy the most discriminating listener.
The last act drags a bit, perhaps because, for some reason, supertitles are left off much of the time. The words may be repeated but it doesn’t hurt to remind us, plus the lighting is dim throughout.
In the supporting roles, Karen Early Evans as the maid Amina, Maya Lahyani as Violetta’s friend Flora, Jonathan Silvia as the Marquis, and Barry Johnson as the Baron, plus Charles Robert Austin as Dr. Grenvil, as well as others are all excellent in their brief roles. It would however have been nice to give a name to the child who acted Alfredo’s little sister. She was listed but not identified among the other actors, including the four party waitresses who sashayed on in high heels and tiny aprons but minimal else.
The orchestra, conducted by Stefano Ranzani in his debut here, did a masterly job of keeping Verdi’s lovely melodies nuanced to fit the story throughout.
This is a thought provoking Traviata, well worth seeing.
