La Traviata @ Fort Worth Opera
—Wayne Lee Gay
Fort Worth Opera’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata last weekend (with the Fort Worth Symphony at Bass Performance Hall) proved a mixed bag, as a captivatingly fine performance by soprano Elaine Alvarez in the principal role of Violetta held together a poorly conceived production of this tuneful tragedy.
After a decades-long history as a blandly solid regional company during much the second half of the last century (albeit one with an impressive record of discovering new talent on the way up), Fort Worth Opera has spent the last few decades constantly struggling to re-invent itself. The results were sometimes stunningly effective (and sometimes not) as the back story played out in the labyrinth of upper-crust Cowtown politics. The pandemic pushed everything back to the starting gate, it seems, and the company once again faces the opportunity and challenge of establishing identity and appeal—this time in a world in which live performance has taken on whole new meanings and burdens.
Ultimately, however, it’s about the singing, and the singing from Alvarez was magnificent at the Sunday afternoon performance I attended. Alvarez produces a tone that’s simultaneously rich, powerful, and gorgeous. Every note is in place, every emotion from resignation to joyful abandon realized within her voice. Whether in the showy high notes and climaxes with which Verdi gifted the role, or the moments of hopelessness and self-examination inherent in the plot, Alvarez sailed smoothly through the dramatically complex and vocally demanding role of a party girl who is desperately aware of her fatal illness.
As Alfredo, tenor Nathan Granner provided a worthy complement to Alvarez’s rendition of Violetta. Along with a voice as seamless and and smooth as hers, he maneuvered neatly through the character of a playboy who genuinely falls in love, and who reacts with spiteful anger to what he feels is Violetta’s betrayal. As Alfredo’s father Giorgio Germont, baritone Kenneth Overton failed to come up to the dramatic or vocal standards set by Alvarez and Granner, at least in the performance I witnessed Sunday.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way the decision was made to abridge Verdi’s 135-minute, three-act opera into a single 90-minute show. John de los Santos, one of the most interesting and skilled stage directors in opera today, pushed the setting from Paris during the middle years of the 19th century into the pre-COVID 21st century, while retaining the geographic location of Paris. (Verdi and his librettist Francesco Piave based the opera on the novel and play La Dame aux Camélias of Alexandre Dumas fils, which also provided the plot for the classic movie Camille of 1936, featuring Greta Garbo’s most famous film appearance.)
A contemporary setting featuring the decadent foibles of leisure-class youth and their trend-setting hangers-on should have as much resonance and relevance today as in the Verdi’s time. But several anachronisms simply loomed too large to make the time shift work. Though the concept of family honor as a burden shared by all family members may have made sense in the Paris of Dumas and in Verdi’s Italy, it’s out of place in the world of misbehaving Clintons, Trumps, Kardashians, and Windsors. Dueling likewise has fortunately died out to the point of inconceivability among today’s spoiled super-rich—who have developed a different set of equally damaging and dangerous methods of physical and emotional harm.
La Traviata’s ballets and party scenes are part of the overall structural balance of the work. Significant cuts to the early parts of the story left the famous deathbed scene taking up too much weight proportionately, risking a loss of impact for the audience—though the scene was effectively acted and performed. And though there are dated social aspects to the traditional three-hour, multi-intermission opera, it nonetheless feels shorter and more engaging than a chopped-up 90-minute version.
Liliana Duque Piñeiro’s sets, based on the timeless ironwork of the Eiffel Tower, were intriguing and appropriate within the overall concept of the production. Ashley Soliman’s costumes likewise colorfully and dutifully represented a consciously casual mega-rich party set. Additional costumes for Violetta by “costume artisans” Florence D’Lee, Troy Anicete, Kyle Pearson, and from Domino Couture, turned Violetta into a flamboyant quasi-drag queen in the party scenes, a notion bordering on the distracting. De los Santos kept the action lively, and as meaningful as possible within the concept of a 21st-century setting.
The cast of lesser characters functioned neatly as a chorus in this reduced production; the opera’s opulent ballet sequences and subplots were, naturally, cut. Conductor Joe Illick kept the action moving forward smoothly in spite of the cuts in the score, with a clean reading from the smaller orchestra. Verdi’s music and Dumas’ tale survived, if somewhat maimed in the process.
WHEN: Closed April 24
WHERE: Bass Performance Hall
WEB: fwopera.org
