ENO La traviata – Minimal Staging Showcases Powerful Performances

ENO La traviata Review – 28 October 2023 by Maxine Morse

The ENO’s La traviata has the feel of a Parisian 1920’s nightclub, enveloped in blacks and reds, with a cast in tuxedos and bob haircuts. The pared down staging puts the focus firmly on stand-out vocals, intense dramatic sequences and beautifully controlled conducting.

We are invited on a two-hour rollercoaster, taking a stomach-churning lurch to the highs of Violetta’s parties, where her inebriated frenemies are willing her downfall.  Then there is a slow dip into her life in the country while she pursues true love before our carriage goes through a dark tunnel when she rejects her lover before we reach a slithering halt in her failing health and death.

If you are accustomed to the many fin de siècle productions of La Traviata, with their stately homes and tulle ballgowns, you may find Johannes Leiacker’s set a challenge. Almost devoid of props and scenery, layers of red velvet curtains are tugged, drawn and pulled to create the various scene changes.

The delicious period feel is largely down to the chorus direction with its joyful goading and clenching of wine glasses at the party to the casino where the chorus purposefully stride across the stage and toss playing cards – minimalist but immensely effective.

The revival director, Ruth Knight gets to the heart of Verdi’s preoccupation with realism in her characterisation of the principal part. Violetta is not the archetypical fallen woman but an embodiment of mystique, power and angst brought down by her relationships with inferior, impotent men and seen through the narrow prism of societal constraints.

Nicole Chevalier brings strength to the role of Violetta with her glorious tsunami of raw emotions. By her final aria Addio del passato (‘It’s over, all those memories full of laughter’) she has lost her wig and her soulful lament is one that will haunt the audience long after the opera is over.

The antithesis of Violetta is her lover, Alfredo Germont (Jose Simerilla Romero). This beige-cardiganed, socially-awkward bookworm conveys all the personality of damp cardboard. Romero rises perfectly to this challenge by first seducing us with his febrile veneration of love and then blasting us with forceful vocals as he blames Violetta for shaming him.

Completing this dark triad is Alfredo Germont’s father. Giorgio Germont performed by Roland Wood is convincing in his display of oily, bourgeois respectability as he coaxes and cajoles Violetta to leave his son in order to protect the family’s reputation.

In the final scene, the supporting performers enter from the rear of the stalls and approach the stage to look on Violetta’s demise as if from the audience perspective – each one exuding a powerful  and almost frozen  presence.

Verdi’s score sparkles under the baton of Richard Farnes from the energy of brindisi with its insistent rhythms to the slower and perfectly controlled movements of the final death scene.

The director’s decision to forego an interval has the effect of asking the audience to drink a triple shot of absinthe…performing La traviata without a pause adds not only to the psychological intensity but also to the audience’s physiological discomfort. And when it ended no one leapt for the doors; instead, thundering applause and foot stamping brought the house down.

Maxine Morse

Maxine trained as an opera critic on ENO Response the opera critics training scheme sponsored by the English National Opera and mentored by Critics’ Circle. She is currently taking live performance reviewing courses at the City Lit and Harvard University.

Please get in touch if you would like her to review opera for your publication.

UNITED KINGDOM, LONDON
La traviata at the English National Opera.
Nicole Chevalier as Violetta, Jose Simerilla Romero as Alfredo and Roland Wood as Giorgio Germont in the Peter Konwitschny production of Verdi’s La traviata continuing the 2023 to 2024 season of the English National Opera at the London Colosseum. The opening night for ENO’s La traviata is on the 23 October with performances up until the 12th November.

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