Thanks for this excellent overview of yesterday's proceedings, IGI!

And for your apposite remarks on TOP too

I have to admit I've got Traviata-fatigue, but I shall tune in on Feb 9th for this   How were the tempi, chorus numbers etc - and did Germont punch Alfredo as required?

Now we just have to export Mr Gurets/Hurets to the ROH as Alfredo to complete the Russian takeover

N

Good gracious me!  You mean there were other performers in it apart from Netrebko?  I bet the little nit on TOP will be demanding Elaine Padmore's "resignation" now, because Netrebko did'nt sing Di Provenza too


Could very well do!   It depends "whom" you want to make him.  I see him as a barometer of what conservative society is thinking about these louche amoral bohemians... and his antipathetic reaction throws him into over-reaction.  He's a man who expects things to happen as society demands, and he has no "tools" to deal with things when they don't...  he is, I think, locked in his own box of expectations, and unable to react appropriately to situations outside that box.  "A well-intentioned small-minded bigot who is convinced that his way is not only best, but the only way", I seem to remember saying    But he's vitally important, he's the "prism" through whom we view the others.  I think it's very important that by his dress and manners he is clearly not a Parisian - this aspect is so often ignored.  He attempts to apply his own external moral code in a situation in which it doesn't hold force.  In his own mind he is entirely right, and cannot understand why others don't see his point of view - he mustn't be played as a "bad" man, or (as I saw recently in another director's program-notes!) "Violetta's nemesis".  He is - in his own clodhopping and foolish way - genuine in his belief that it will be better for her to break with his son, I think.  [Of course, the entire plot of TRAVIATA must have stung Verdi's own sense of indignation, after the roasting he was given by polite society in his youth for setting up home with an unmarried woman.]  {In my own production I did one of those now-terribly-cliched things about having action during the overture... Germont driking himself into a stupor of rage against himself.  It's a very untricksy* show other than that, "tell the story" is the maxim.)

I thought a lot about that pivotal scene, which is loaded with yes/no choices throughout.  In the end I concluded he shouldn't embrace her, because tactile contact from a man of his station and background with a girl like Violetta would have been a social taboo.  Instead, you can play with his internal agony about wanting to embrace her, but failing to summon the courage, or moment, to do so.  You can say a lot in small gestures like that     The contrast between his anally-retentive social hang-ups, and Violetta's alarming (to him) lack of them, can become the behavioural blueprint for the scene...  "all drama is built on conflict", as they say

I saw an utterly terrible TRAVIATA recently (I told you I had Traviata-fatigue!) in which Annina is secretly poisoning Violetta throughout the opera!        

And another bloody awful one in St Petersburg in October, in which Violetta is a streetwalker... (oh, and Flora was a transvestite hooker, sung by a countertenor in drag - makes a change from Flora being a lesbian, anyhow...)  at the very end, she sings that she feels better, runs out into the street and is hit by a passing taxi (curtain).  Although this was undoubtedly the most loony production I'd ever seen of the piece, the Violetta was Anna Nechaeva, about whom I've been enthusing ever since...  astounding all-round performance!!     I assure all boarders that my entirely objective praise for Ms Nechaeva was unswayed by the black latex hotpants
 

* with the exception that at the every end,  Violetta embraces Germont in an act of forgiveness before falling dead in his arms, leaving Alfredo as the helpless immature berk he secretly is, and Germont unable to pull her off him as she falls.  I admit to this not being my completely my own idea... it was suggested to me during rehearsals - in a country where Buddhism is the national religion - that "forgiveness" ought to be the conclusion.  I'm very happy with the way it looks,  although different sopranos have wanted a more "cliffhanging" final moment.

radio 3, this saturday

Violetta's a hugely difficult role, because of the tessitura...  "It needs a coloratura in Act One, a lyric in Act Two, and a dramatic soprano in the last act", as Josephine Barstow once said

She was right, of course - and it also needs a first-class actress throughout.  But then that side of things comes/came so naturally to Barstow that she probably wouldn't even have considered it from that angle.

Ermonela Jaho, who replaced Netrebko in the earlier cast, was the ideal all-rounder.  Although I am sorry to have missed Netrebko, Jaho's performance was something I would, in hindsight, not have missed for anything (as was Amsellem's in the 2005 revival).

It's pretty rare for a soprano to be able to get the whole thing right, and when somebody does, the result is somewhat akin to being thumped in the emotional solar plexus.  I was fortunate enough to have just such an experience at the first opera performance I ever attended, and it sparked a passion which made me the person I am today!  (This was at Scottish Opera with the young Claire Rutter, whom Hugh Canning in the Sunday Times called "unquestionably the best British Violetta since Josephine Barstow").

I wish I had been around long enough to have heard Barstow in the role...

I thought Netrebko was excellent, even if she did, unforgiveably, garble the letter scene.

Ermonela Jaho was also very good (although nowhere near as loud as Trebs!) and certainly better than many who have featured as Violetta in this production of Traviata over the years.

I part company with Ruth over Amsellem, who I first saw when she first sang in this production two years ago. I would agree that her voice is not in the first rank, but unlike Ruth I didn't like her interpretation.  To me, she miscalculated the second act and became hysterical too soon in the dialogue with Germont Pere, so that she had nowhere to go for the later scenes with Alfredo and at Flora's party.  Perhaps it was just the night I saw her..

The first Violetta I saw on stage was the incomparable Ileana Cotrubas, who is still to my mind one of the very best ever.

Meanwhile, Deborah Voigt has pulled-out of THE RING in Vienna, saying that it just doesn't fit her voice.  This is actually the second time she's withdrawn from it,  and she had been persuaded to sing only the latter two operas...  but she's now scrubbed entirely.

However, so far our "golden ecu" chum in the short pants on TOP appears to be in ignorance - of this, and much else