Sir David McVicar’s 2008 conventional staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s tragic opera La Traviata is a favorite with Scottish Opera’s loyal viewers and rightfully so. Here it returns triumphantly for its second revival.
It’s Belle Époque Paris, and after a hedonistic life, famed courtesan Violetta Valéry (Hye-Youn Lee) has achieved what she thought unachievable: she has lastly discovered love together with her long-time admirer, the younger, idealistic, well-connected Alfredo Germont (Ji-Min Park). But the demi-monde of Paris is scandalised by their relationship, none extra so than Alfredo’s father Giorgio (Phillip Rhodes). Violetta resides on borrowed time: her previous just isn’t the one impediment to her last probability of happiness, her failing well being is quick taking its toll.
Causing shock, and scandalising the native clergy who decried the “immorality of Italian opera” on its Scottish premiere in 1857, Scottish Opera has introduced Verdi’s work to life with a forged of robust ideas and soloists, a teeming refrain, dancers, actors and performances from the corporate’s newest Emerging and Associate Artists: Lea Shaw, Monwabisi Lindi, and Ross Cumming.
While the shock worth has disappeared and the social mores of the day lengthy forgotten, the tragic love story at its coronary heart is everlasting. Sir David McVicar’s manufacturing is luxurious, a visible and aural deal with from the second the curtain rises till it falls. It is an ideal portray of the interval delivered to life. The high quality of the music unquestionably wonderful. The Orchestra of Scottish Opera are on their most interesting kind, filling each centimetre of the auditorium.
The lush and lavish staging within the occasion sequences with a full-blooded refrain, actors and dancers are after all a spotlight, however it impresses as a lot in its quieter extra emotional moments. The characterisations are fantastically developed, the singers appearing expertise a match for his or her vocals. It can also be a manufacturing the place every featured position makes its personal impression, irrespective of how massive or small. Lee and Park because the fateful lovers are fantastically matched. Phillip Rhodes impresses as Giorgio Germont, completely portraying the characters emotional arc as does Nicholas Lester because the imposing Barone Douphol.
While wanting completely of the interval, that is no interval piece, McVicar tells the story in a recent, vivid method. The almost three-hour operating time flashes by within the blink of an eye fixed. The viewers gripped for its entirety.
The present season at Scottish Opera involves a triumphant shut with this pitch excellent manufacturing.
Runs till 18 May 2024 then touring | Image: James Glossop
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