San Francisco Classical Voice

Choi, with a master’s degree from Juilliard, has clearly been well-trained in bel canto. She softens and rounds out a note after she’s hit it and sings with a firm legato. I noticed only a couple of slightly awkward phrasing breaks, which could have been momentary slips. She let the orchestra push her through the first line of "Sempre libera" as if she were unprepared for it, but took command thereafter. By contrast, she reigned supreme in Acts II and III. Her "Non più esiste" (The past no longer exists; my love for Alfred has cancelled it), which is a crucial line, was perfect, with both the accelerando and the ritardando appearing naturally, as if spoken.

Although she is helped by her looks, Choi also happens to be an excellent actress. She was clearly a modern Traviata, but with enough sense of formal manners to create the illusion of another time. She was affecting but not cloying, and she showed impressive concentration. You could see her hear and react to the other actors even when not looking at them.

Her Alfredo, Arthur Shen, was another casting coup. He has beautiful tone – with ping, that elusive but crucial lyric tenor quality, in which the sound of a note attack has a trumpetlike cut. Like Choi, he displayed well-developed legato and, since there's no sign of strain or effort in his register break, he has an openness and freedom in his sound. He was also able to concentrate on the words, pointing lines like a pro. But he tended to misjudge dynamics in the small space, singing too loudly on several important occasions, such as his wooing of Violetta in Act I. (You can’t bellow in a woman’s ear and expect her to respond.)

Ralph Cato’s Germont was thoroughly professional, although I think that the character should be portrayed as somewhat harder and less fatherly. Cato has a solid sound, well placed and full, and he, too, sang with a strong sense of line. His Italian, though, is too emphatically pronounced, and he often sounds stilted, like an elocution teacher, unintentionally emphasizing words and consonant clusters.

In the supporting cast, Donna Olson made a commanding presence as Flora; Claudio Santomé sang superbly as Gastone and helped buoy the chorus, especially in the Act II ensemble; Patricia Barboza showed polished tone as Annina; Jesse Merlin, as the Marquis D’Obigny, displayed a strong voice; and Dan Morris gave fine support as Dr. Grenvil. The 23-piece orchestra, although occasionally ragged in tone (particularly the violins), played with fairly precise rhythm and dynamic control. Alexander Katsman’s suave conducting made the music flow evenly and naturally.

The production was lovingly retro and had the timeless look of community theater, with nicked and dinged furniture, plastic potted ferns, and a bunch of mix-and-match costumes, some of them ill-fitting. Yet no one cared, for we knew that it was created on a tight budget. The bigger problem was that producer Maria Billingsley and director Cesare Curzi designed too much set, or, possibly, lacked sufficient crew members to make the set changes effectively.

For whatever reason, someone imposed three long intermissions in this two-hour opera. No one even stepped outside for the third. The second scene of Act II, itself only 20 minutes long, was followed by a scene change of the same duration, so that all the good work the singers had done building the tension to the climax was dissipated before the action could resume. The moral of this story: Scene changes should be designed along with the set, and must be rehearsed to be efficient.

Curzi’s traditional staging held few surprises or revelations, but it had its moments, like the well-staged death scene. Overall, while he managed the stage traffic unobtrusively, a few details stuck out. In this production Germont never put down his walking stick. (Customarily, in the period of the opera, you gave your hat and cane to a servant as you entered.) This made an odd picture, as if Germont were waiting for Violetta to get her coat and go out with him. He was still holding the cane as he tried to comfort Alfredo at the end of that scene, and he carried it again in the ensemble scene at Flora’s house.

When Violetta asked Annina to let in some light, in the last act, Annina made a halfhearted pantomime gesture at a pretend window, and a lighting change occurred only later. In the gambling scene at Flora’s house, a bottle of Jack Daniels stood on the table. Until David Mamet or Sam Shepherd rewrites La traviata, Jack has no place in the opera. Also, Violetta went through the whole of Act I with bodice strings hanging down the back of her dress. Apparently, no one could figure out how to tuck them in. Most of these details could easily be dealt with, which is why they were so annoying. The show would have been crisper if they were taken care of.

One final note: It's fine to make audience members pay for a printed program, but the cast and production staff credits must be distributed at the house door for free. Altogether, though, this was a good show, despite growing pains. Now that Martinez Opera has found its voice, we can look for improvements in its next show production.