✭✭✭✩✩

by Giuseppe Verdi, directed by Dmitri Bertman

Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto

May 4-26, 2007

☛ For the 2015 COC production of La Traviata, click HERE.

Now that the Canadian Opera Company has revived Dmitri Bertman’s controversial production of La Traviata, it’s hard to see what all the fuss was about.   In 1999 when the production premiered, the audience cast aside its Canadian civility and greeted the curtain call with loud, competing volleys of boos and bravos.  This time there was general enthusiasm for the orchestra and singers but not much for the production.  In fact, the current La Traviata is a real jumble of plusses and minuses.

Bertman’s updating of the setting from the 18th to the 20th century is still welcome.  Lavish velvets and satins can disguise the fact that Violetta (Inva Mula), “one who has strayed” to translate the title, is a prostitute.  It’s not too surprising then that at the wild parties she attends, some people are decked out in S&M gear.  The design dichotomy between black and white also works.  Grim 20th-century industrial sets and black leather-clad hipsters of Violetta’s present contrast with the white scallop-shaped Belle Epoque sets and people in white 19th-century ball gowns and frock coats of the romantic fantasies.  Yet, Bertman doesn’t know when to stop.  To have Violetta’s maid Annina (Betty Allison) symbolize Fate is a bit much but to have Annina’s train lengthen with her every appearance looks as silly now as in 1999.  To substitute madness for Violetta’s tuberculosis is a good idea, but to have singers constantly move her bed about during the important final scene is pointlessly distracting. 

The singing itself is a mixture of good and bad.  Mula has pleasant voice in her middle range, but under the slightest pressure it turns squally and metallic.  James Valenti’s good looks and natural acting take him far as Violetta’s lover Alfredo, but he needs more power and a fuller, more rounded tone to carry off the part. Alexander Marco-Buhrmester as Alfredo’s father, who demands that Violetta break off with his son, has the most consistent singing of the three principals, but one wishes his tone better reflected his character’s change of attitude toward Violetta from harshness to sympathy. 

Under conductor Daniele Callegari, the COC Orchestra has to contend with a few too-slow speeds but otherwise plays with their accustomed richness of sound.  Though the chorus cavorts rather wanly in their titillating outfits, they sing with precision and vigour.  If you can see past most of the distracting stage business, Bertman’s production provides much food for thought and is a useful corrective to the sentimentalized Traviatas most companies present.  Different principals might bring improvement and readers should note that Nicoleta Ardelean, Daniil Shtoda and Alan Opie alternate with Mula, Valenti and Marco-Buhrmester for selected performances.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-05-05.

Photo: Inva Mula and Alan Opie. ©Michael Cooper.