OPERA REVIEW: First-Rate "Traviata" By Michael Zwiebach (San Francisco Lyric Opera, March 8, 2003)

OPERA REVIEW

First-Rate Traviata

March 8, 2003

By Michael Zwiebach

Like a gambler with a lucky touch, the San Francisco Lyric Opera continued its run on consumptive heroines, as its production of La Traviata opened on Saturday night at the Eureka Theatre. The show's high points far outweighed its few problems and the rough spots should not deter anyone from seeing Verdi's opera in a space where the intimate motions of the drama feel natural and unforced.

Following modern performance tradition, director Kay Kleinerman's production was set in 19th-century Paris and took all the usual cuts (the cabalettas for Alfredo and his father Giorgio, for example). The director also added staging to the prelude, an irresistible temptation for modern directors and a necessity given the lack of an orchestra pit. But Ms. Kleinerman is a "clean" director: the story was told clearly and effectively, the whole cast was well-drilled and cohesive, and there were imaginative details in the staging.

Here are two quick examples: in the first act party, Baron Douphol, who was downstage, engaged in conversation with another woman for much of the scene, so that his cool reply to Violetta's remark that he neglected her when she was ill was part of a pattern that established their relationship. In Act II, during their tense conversation, Violetta appealed impulsively to Giorgio Germont for a fatherly embrace and he involuntarily recoiled. The audience also wants the embrace, as a conciliatory gesture that reduces the scene's awful tension, but Germont's refusal was more revealing of his character and, not incidentally, of his relationship with his son. Put together, these two moments unobtrusively underlined Violetta's outcast status in society, which she well understands from the beginning. The doomed heroine gives the opera its mythic dimension, but Kleinerman uncovers that myth in the opera's details.

Playing the part

The production gained immeasurably from a fine Violetta Valéry. In her second foray into tubercular-soprano land, Lanier McNab (an excellent Mimì in last year's La Bohème at the Lyric Opera) was a dignified and self-aware heroine, making her death scene even more devastating than usual. In the scene, her portrayal was physically different from other actors. Galvanized by Alfredo's arrival, she collapsed on the stage floor painfully — more than once, trying to overcome her illness and return to the lover's idyll that has occupied her imagination during her long confinement in her sickroom. The conflict of physical frailty with willpower and desire was a fitting ending to McNab's portrayal.

McNab continues to impress as a singer with secure tone, a mature sound, expressive phrasing and dynamics, and, above all, intelligence. She showed a tremendous grasp of the essentials of the role. And she did marvelous work with "Dite alla giovine," when she succumbs to Germont, making her surrender moving with a true piano dynamic. Work still remains to be done on "Sempre libera," the main hurdle in this role, but it was in good-enough shape, and she used the number's difficulty in her dramatic interpretation.

McNab's Alfredo was John Davey-Hatcher, who brought to mind stereotypes of tenorial stiffness, especially in the first act. In the duet with Violetta, his singing and acting lacked the lover's warmth that is needed to convince the courtesan to throw away everything she has on him. Davey-Hatcher's passaggio register seemed problematic, with more than a fair share of stressed or cracked notes. On the other hand, he gave a fine account of "De miei bollenti spiriti" and generally relaxed in the latter acts, displaying an ability to craft an unbroken legato line.

Where less is more

Roberto Gomez was Alfredo's father, Giorgio, and he has a powerful voice, which he knows how to control in pianissimo passages. The full, even tone was welcome in "Di Provenza il mar" but even better was the strong underlining of individual phrases in his duet with Violetta. Clearly, Mr. Gomez is destined for larger opera houses, but he showed here an ability to play-sing in a venue where clarity and nuance are prized above a huge sound.

The supporting roles were ably taken. Clea Nemetz was a bright, charming Flora, William Brockmeier an appropriately severe Baron Douphol, Jonathan Nadel a razor-toned Gastone. One of the greatest areas of improvement in this show over La Bohème was the singing of the chorus, which in Traviata was spot-on both in rhythm and pitch. There is more sound there now, as well.

Conductor Barnaby Palmer had a firm beat, and led a crisp performance, but I wish he would slow down some tempi and allow for more rubato. For starters, I would point him to Violetta's emphatic phrase in her duet with Germont, "The past no longer exists, because I love Alfredo and God has canceled it with my repentance." Verdi marks the moment with a phrase that soars to a high A before falling gracefully to a cadence. Its performance requires a flexibility that can accommodate both Violetta's enthusiasm and her belief in the truth of the sentiment at that moment. But Palmer drove his players and singer over the phrase as if it were just ordinary recitative. In the score, the "in tempo Allegro" marking lasts for only a measure-and-a-half at the top of the phrase.

If the health of a city's artistic life is judged not only by its major institutions but by the breadth of interest in and support for the arts, then we have to be encouraged that in these perilous economic times the Lyric Opera continues to thrive and put on excellent performances such as this Traviata.