The Royal Opera: ‘La Traviata’
Royal Opera House, Convent Garden - 02/04/22
From the sublime to the second rate?
This was my feeling after the morning (11.30 am!) launch of the latest cast change of Covent Garden’s ‘La Traviata’ on April 2. This popular crowd pleaser is being put on no less than 27 different times this season, with 6 different casts. The Royal Opera has become a ‘Traviata house’, or as some might think a travesty house of what an opera company ought to be! Of course ‘Traviata’ is all about pulling in the crowds and there was a pretty full house on Saturday morning, many of them excited to be there for the first time and thinking it was “wonderful”. For the more experienced of us sadly it was a disappointment. After the sublime ‘Peter Grimes’ of Thursday night, which I reviewed for Slipped Disc and the Edinburgh Music Review, we got a second rate ‘Traviata’ with a second or third string cast and it was no surprise to find an experienced operagoer sitting next to me in my normal upper slips seats did not reappear after the first act! I was tempted to do the same but was restrained by my need to review it.
There is nothing wrong with Richard Eyre’s 1996 production of ‘Traviata’ but it is surely the job of one of the world’s leading opera houses to innovate and create new productions, and with co-productions, as with ‘Peter Grimes’, they can reduce the costs. With the cast changes for ‘Traviata’ come the conductor changes, the latest one was Giacomo Sagripanti, a young Italian conductor who has won some awards in the past, but this morning seemed intent on making this the slowest and perhaps longest ‘Traviata’ on record. His overture pace was funereal and ‘Traviata’ limped rather than leapt into the action of the opening party scene. Here we were introduced to our principals, Pretty Yende as Violetta and Stephen Costello as Alfredo. Pretty Yende is the first of 3 Violettas in this 11- night run of Traviata and at 37 she is no longer a young sensation from South Africa, but an established international star who I have been impressed with in the past. Yet this morning I found her first act disappointing with occasionally wobbly coloratura and less than convincing lower registers. She got better in subsequent acts but never reached the sublime heights of classic Violettas, or even more recent ones such as Ermonela Jaho who entranced me in 2019 at the Garden. Stephen Costello is also now an international tenor of repute, but I found him disappointing. He has a head voice somewhat nasal in delivery and didn’t convince me that he was passionately in love with Violetta in act one. I remember Pavarotti saying you should sing from your stomach, something Costello clearly didn’t attempt. Again he got better in later acts but left me underwhelmed compared to not only the greats of the past but even more recent Alfredo’s such as Charles Castronovo or Joseph Calleja.
Dimitri Platanias is now, at 51, a veteran of Covent Garden performances and the Greek baritone rarely disappoints, but again I found his Germont somewhat understated, comparing badly with the great baritones of the past, although he certainly was better than Placido Domingo’s attempt at the role in 2019. The rest of the cast were fine, and the chorus and the ballet dancers did their best to inject life into this rather limp performance.
Of course it is the curse of critics and experienced operagoers to be disappointed when performances don’t measure up to great nights at the opera house in the past. But it is also the job of the critic to be critical and for me this was the most underwhelming ‘Traviata’ of the many I have seen in the past. Still it will no doubt fill the house most nights and that may be important for the economics of Covent Garden. Is it enough?
