Austin Lyric Opera
Conductor weaves a revelatory "La Traviata"
November 12, 2010In opera, no less than in purely orchestral music, the conductor matters.
One detail (of many) in Austin Lyric Opera’s current production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” drove that point home with special force.
It is Act III. The once-glamorous courtesan Violetta -- impoverished, separated from her beloved Alfredo and dying of tuberculosis -- sings “Addio, del passato”: Farewell, happy dreams of the past. Soprano Pamela Armstrong sings it beautifully and with an apt sense of desolation and wistfulness.
The aria gains immense poignancy, however, from conductor Richard Buckley’s treatment of the orchestral backdrop. While the soprano is singing, the strings lay down a very simple groove consisting of three staccato A-minor chords, with the celli playing pizzicato; the figure is repeated with harmonic variation seven more times before the accompaniment changes with a bridge passage.
In most performances, that groove passes more or less without notice; it does nothing more than establish the harmonic territory and the six-eight meter.
But most conductors do not wholeheartedly observe Verdi’s staccato marks. Buckley did. Together with his sculpting of tempo and dynamics, his very pointed staccato transformed that ordinarily unremarkable groove into a stabbing whimper, a musical picture of heartbreaking sadness. I’d never heard this accompaniment played that way. It was a revelation. It was Verdi.
Throughout the evening, this was as sensitively shaped a performance of “La Traviata” as I’ve heard anywhere. But there was much to like about this production beyond Buckley’s conducting.
“La Traviata” opened Nov. 6 in Austin’s Long Center and continues Nov. 12 at 7:30 pm and Nov 14 at 3 pm. I caught the Nov. 10 show.
In that performance, Act I had some problems. Anderson projected a big, glossy, somewhat dark sound and a thrilling high register with a nice bloom, but she didn’t cleanly deliver the florid gymnastics in the final sequence. Nor did she come close, either vocally or physically, to portraying the conflicted character of Violetta as she is in Act I -- the mix of forced frivolity, physical pain and longing. The Alfredo, tenor Chad Shelton, was vocally patchy. Ensemble slipped at times.
Matters improved considerably in the succeeding acts. Anderson was very affecting in her Act II scene with Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont (splendidly sung by baritone Grant Youngblood), and in Act III she finally inhabited the role fully enough to take vocal risks, all of which paid off with dramatic accuracy. Shelton bright, youthful instrument was more sturdy than consistently beautiful, but he hit the money notes with ease, and he sang stylishly, with an excellent sense of rhythm.
Desmond Heely designed the sumptuous -- almost oppressively so -- sets and costumes for Lyric Opera of Chicago. (The same décor was seen previously in Texas in a Houston Grand Opera production that was notable for Renée Fleming’s first Violetta.)
Garnett Bruce’s stage direction was fairly straightforward, but with some wonderful details. It was especially good to see the often-perfunctory role of Dr. Grenvil (handsomely sung and convincingly acted by bass Matthew Arnold) fleshed out by portraying the tenderness of his friendship with Violetta. This treatment of Dr Grenvil also shed additional light on the character of Violetta, made her seem more real and more human. As the saying goes, there are no small parts.
Mike
Greenberg
