Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo, Bogotá, 12 July 2024
Giuseppe Verdi: La traviata
What Giuseppe Verdi sought to do with La traviata in 1853 was to portray real characters with their virtues and defects, whether they were courtesans or bourgeois, young or old. Every main character is flawed, even if they have the best of intentions. The premiere at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice was a failure. Verdi blamed the singers, but his presentation of a very contemporary depiction of the Parisian demi-monde was undoubtedly very uncomfortable for the audience, especially for those who identified with what was happening on stage.
Stage director Pedro Salazar, a disciple of Patrice Chéreau, transported the action very effectively from 1850s Paris to 1930s Bogotá. The period costumes, the little hints of Art Deco visuals and the addition of props such as a car on stage or a neon sign at Flora’s party in Act II worked very well with the action of the opera. Salazar used the depth of the stage very effectively, dividing it into different rooms not with walls but with picture frames, making it feel at times like we were in an art exhibition or looking through a picture book. There was a screen at the back of the stage that could project whatever the production needed to make it more stylish. Although there were some creative choices I didn’t agree with, such as Alfredo appearing on stage at the end of the first act when he should be singing off stage, all things considered, the production was successful in how they wanted to present the opera.
Musical direction was in charge of Colombian maestro Andrés Orozco-Estrada, currently chief conductor of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra and former chief conductor of orchestras such as the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and the Houston Symphony. His conducting was that of someone who clearly understands the work very well: calculated, meticulous and detailed. His slower tempi allowed us to savour a little more of the nuances hidden in Verdi’s music. The ‘Brindisi’, for example, often played wrongly as a boisterous drinking song, was an elegant toast, as it should always be. His good rapport with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia, the Coro Nacional de Colombia and the soloists was evident from the first note to the last.
Violetta Valéry is one of the most complex characters in opera. Her longing for something more meaningful than her hedonistic life as a courtesan and her feeling that she doesn’t quite belong in the bourgeois world when she becomes part of it, together with the terminal illness that afflicts her, make for a very nuanced character. The Russian soprano Julia Muzychenko-Greenhalgh managed to master all the facets of Violetta. Her beautiful, light lyric voice was a high point of the performance and her coloratura in Act I was precise and agile. When I thought Acts II and III would be too heavy and taxing for her voice, she surprised the audience with a dramatic side of her performance that we didn’t perceive in Act I. With an already promising career, you can confidently say that she will soon be appearing in very important opera houses around the world. Italian tenor Paolo Fanale, on the other hand, had a difficult evening as Alfredo Germont. At times he was drowned out by the orchestra or the other soloists and was often short of breath, perhaps a consequence of Bogotá’s altitude. From the second part of the second act he improved and managed to finish the opera on a higher note. Argentinian baritone Fabián Veloz was a fantastic Giorgio Germont. His powerful voice was a highlight of the performance, the Act II duet with Violetta was one of the best parts of the entire opera and his ‘Di Provenza’ was masterfully sung. It’s a shame that his cabaletta ‘No, non udrai rimproveri’ was inexplicably cut as it would have sounded wonderfully in his voice.
