Scottish Opera La Traviata Festival Theatre Edinburgh 7th June 2024 Review
Photo credit James Glossop
Scottish Opera: La Traviata is at the Festival Theatre until Saturday 15th June, and if the large amount of people that were in the audience tonight is anything to go by then this story of an ultimately doomed love affair is still as popular as it has ever been.
This very realistic take on Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” is a co production with Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, Gran Teatre del Liceu and Teatro Real Madrid. Sung in Italian with English subtitles over three acts, this is a revival of Sir David McVicar’s production for Scottish Opera (2008 & 2017), and together with his characteristic eye for detail, coupled with designs by Tanya McCallin, we are all taken into the very private world of Parisian high life, its courtesans and their oh so many parties and infidelities. At the heart of this circle of wealth, privilege and immorality is the most desired courtesan of Paris, Violetta Valéry (Hye-Youn Lee).
This is a sumptuous production of both costumes and sets, but interestingly designer Tanya McCallin has, by virtue of making these sets a series of rooms, given this production very intimate spaces for this story to unfold in.
La Traviata is itself based on La Dame aux camélias (1852), a play by Alexandre Dumas, which he adapted from his own 1848 novel (thank you Wikipedia) and there is always some doubt here about just how much of Verdi’s own personal life is in this story too. Whatever the origins of the source material truly are, one thing is not in doubt, and that is that here Verdi created a musical masterpiece, and the role of Violetta is not only one of the most technically challenging for any singer, but also one that so many dream of getting the opportunity to perform on stage. And why not, this opera has everything; a classic story of love found and lost, then at the last moment found again plus some of the most iconic songs in the operatic repertoire, and possibly, in its opening moments, the most famous drinking song of them all.
For reasons that many of us would find bizarre today, death by consumption (tuberculosis) was in the 18th and 19th centuries often portrayed as a romantic one. In this production however, Sir David McVicar creates no such illusions and gives in this story a far more honest depiction of Violetta’s final moments. Tonight, a large part of that realism was due to Hye-Youn Lee who not only gave a fine vocal performance of the many technically demanding vocal aspects of the role of Violetta, but also as a dramatic performance. Hye-Youn Lee simply gave all of us in the audience tonight the portrayal of a real woman willing to sacrifice and eventually give up everything for her love of the man of her life, Alfredo Germont.
I always think that whoever is playing the role of Alfredo faces many challenges as this whole story is so often about the strength and courage of the love of his life, Violetta, and not him, and all too often his role is a secondary one. There is also one of those rare moments in opera here too where it is the woman who is really the strong and dominating person here too with the man of the story being the far weaker one. Despite the restrictions of this role, Ji-Min Park gave us all a very good performance as Alfredo Germont both vocally and dramatically and it was good to see someone perform this role who understood just how fragile and dependent on Violetta he was.
Despite this being one of the great love stories of the operatic world, it is always in Act ll that one of my favourite scenes happens, that moment when Violetta meets for the first time Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont. This is the crucial moment in this story where Violetta agrees to give up everything she has for the good of someone that she does not even know (Alfredo’s sister). The whole scene here between Phillip Rhodes (Giorgio Germont) and Hye-Youn Lee (Violetta) is full of emotion, and oddly for an opera, with the right performers, as tonight, so much of what is really spoken, what is truly understood between the two of them, is actually silent.
It is the realism of this production that saves the final moments of Violetta’s death becoming just another opera cliché, and although it was not obvious from the stalls, only higher up in the circles of the theatre, this whole production was taken place on a floor that was actually Violetta’s headstone.
If you have never been to an opera before, or for some reason think that opera is not for you, then try this production out as you will probably be surprised at just what a well-produced and well-performed opera can achieve.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
This very realistic take on Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” is a co production with Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, Gran Teatre del Liceu and Teatro Real Madrid. Sung in Italian with English subtitles over three acts, this is a revival of Sir David McVicar’s production for Scottish Opera (2008 & 2017), and together with his characteristic eye for detail, coupled with designs by Tanya McCallin, we are all taken into the very private world of Parisian high life, its courtesans and their oh so many parties and infidelities. At the heart of this circle of wealth, privilege and immorality is the most desired courtesan of Paris, Violetta Valéry (Hye-Youn Lee).
This is a sumptuous production of both costumes and sets, but interestingly designer Tanya McCallin has, by virtue of making these sets a series of rooms, given this production very intimate spaces for this story to unfold in.
La Traviata is itself based on La Dame aux camélias (1852), a play by Alexandre Dumas, which he adapted from his own 1848 novel (thank you Wikipedia) and there is always some doubt here about just how much of Verdi’s own personal life is in this story too. Whatever the origins of the source material truly are, one thing is not in doubt, and that is that here Verdi created a musical masterpiece, and the role of Violetta is not only one of the most technically challenging for any singer, but also one that so many dream of getting the opportunity to perform on stage. And why not, this opera has everything; a classic story of love found and lost, then at the last moment found again plus some of the most iconic songs in the operatic repertoire, and possibly, in its opening moments, the most famous drinking song of them all.
For reasons that many of us would find bizarre today, death by consumption (tuberculosis) was in the 18th and 19th centuries often portrayed as a romantic one. In this production however, Sir David McVicar creates no such illusions and gives in this story a far more honest depiction of Violetta’s final moments. Tonight, a large part of that realism was due to Hye-Youn Lee who not only gave a fine vocal performance of the many technically demanding vocal aspects of the role of Violetta, but also as a dramatic performance. Hye-Youn Lee simply gave all of us in the audience tonight the portrayal of a real woman willing to sacrifice and eventually give up everything for her love of the man of her life, Alfredo Germont.
I always think that whoever is playing the role of Alfredo faces many challenges as this whole story is so often about the strength and courage of the love of his life, Violetta, and not him, and all too often his role is a secondary one. There is also one of those rare moments in opera here too where it is the woman who is really the strong and dominating person here too with the man of the story being the far weaker one. Despite the restrictions of this role, Ji-Min Park gave us all a very good performance as Alfredo Germont both vocally and dramatically and it was good to see someone perform this role who understood just how fragile and dependent on Violetta he was.
Despite this being one of the great love stories of the operatic world, it is always in Act ll that one of my favourite scenes happens, that moment when Violetta meets for the first time Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont. This is the crucial moment in this story where Violetta agrees to give up everything she has for the good of someone that she does not even know (Alfredo’s sister). The whole scene here between Phillip Rhodes (Giorgio Germont) and Hye-Youn Lee (Violetta) is full of emotion, and oddly for an opera, with the right performers, as tonight, so much of what is really spoken, what is truly understood between the two of them, is actually silent.
It is the realism of this production that saves the final moments of Violetta’s death becoming just another opera cliché, and although it was not obvious from the stalls, only higher up in the circles of the theatre, this whole production was taken place on a floor that was actually Violetta’s headstone.
If you have never been to an opera before, or for some reason think that opera is not for you, then try this production out as you will probably be surprised at just what a well-produced and well-performed opera can achieve.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com