La Traviata
Composer: Verdi Director: Richard Eyre Conductor: Daniele Rustioni Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London WC2 (020-7304 4000) Until 1 February, then 14 June-4 July Running time: 3hrs 25mins (including two intervals)
Richard Eyre’s superb 1994 staging of La Traviata has become a mainstay of the Royal Opera’s repertoire, said Tim Ashley in The Guardian. It has been “carefully moulded over the years” to the fine casts that have appeared in it. This latest revival, which runs for just a few more performances in late January, and can then be seen again in June and early July, is among the finest yet – “notable above all for its focused dramatic integrity and subtlety of insight”. Daniele Rustioni’s conducting is “wonderfully vital, with rhythmic patterns beautifully attuned to the psychological shifts throughout”. And few sopranos can have conveyed Violetta’s misery with such immediacy as the Lebanese-canadian Joyce El-khoury, who proves a gifted actress. It is “difficult to get through both the second act party scene and the final act without tears”.
From her first soliloquy to her final aria, El-khoury “commands the stage with radiant authority” as the doomed courtesan, agreed Michael Church in The Independent. “Her pianissimi are exquisite, her coloratura is bold, fearless and flawless, and the expressiveness of her sound grips the heart.” Sergey Romanovsky’s Alfredo is also “gorgeously sung, but stiffly acted”. Still, the relationship between them “works so well musically” that any “dramatic shortcomings scarcely matter”.
In my view, the contrast between the very natural Violetta and the “stiff, formal, shy Alfredo” worked splendidly, said Richard Fairman in the FT – suggesting a society “where a gentle brush on the cheek with the back of the hand can be a young suitor’s daring first move”. El-khoury’s voice, a mixture of “fragility” and “brilliance”, is perfect for Violetta, said Fiona Maddocks in The Observer. And who wouldn’t fall for Romanovsky’s “pure-voiced Alfredo, austere yet ardent”. The orchestra and chorus, too, were on “tip-top form” – and for spectacle and immediacy this opera, in this staging, is “hard to beat. Find an opera novice and go. I did. Her pleasure doubled my own”.