Review: LA TRAVIATA, Royal Ballet And Opera

Opera as a whole may be too reliant on museum pieces, on endless identikit revivals designed to secure bums on seats. But in the case of Richard Eyre’s 1994 La traviata, the old adage might be true: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The blueprint for hundreds of pale imitations, this is a production where every set piece feels comforting and familiar: the stifling oval ballroom, the liberation of Alfredo’s dilapidated countryside pile, the light seeping in through the shutters while Violetta wastes away, her white robe a beacon in a sea of mourning garb. Yet it’s difficult to imagine telling this story in any other way.

For, as one of Verdi’s more straightforward plots, this is a libretto that lives and dies based on the strength of its central theme, its notion of love as a choice and a difficult one at that. Bob Crowley’s sets are suitably cavernous, both revelling in the grandeur of 19th-century Paris and allowing for intrusions from reality, a silhouette or a call from offstage, to creep in. Here, the public and the private are at odds, and are deeply intertwined.

Where Eyre’s perennial Traviata does get a breath of new life is in the individual performances. Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho injects a certain haughtiness in Violetta throughout proceedings, an air of defiant pragmatism even as she faces a lonely death, only occasionally betraying hints of vulnerability and self-doubt. Opposite this perpetual survivor is Giovanni Sala as Alfredo, buoyed by an stubborn earnestness that lends Violetta, and the text as a whole, a romantic touchstone.

Just as the production design understands the grandeur and tragedy of the text, the RBO Orchestra conducted by Antonello Manacorda has an instinctive sense of the story’s emotional ebbs and flows. There is well-timed punctuation for climactic moments, but also a welcome willingness to languish in the silence. Manacorda’s approach to the overture is a particular highlight, a delicate crescendo that refuses to overload the senses, and feels like waking from a dream.

In a similar way, the vast ensemble, playing the Parisian milieu in various party scenes, are adept at bringing the story’s emotional beats back down to Earth. Violetta and Alfredo may inhabit their own world, but a crowd of onlookers is always there to confront with reality, whether through approval or opprobrium. The cast moves and sings as one, its presence a baptism of fire for the leads.

Though there are no doubt moments here that feel old-fashioned – when they aren’t singing, a chorus of over 50 on stage at once can feel static and visually overwhelming – this is still a timeless production for a reason. And when we first see Violetta sequestered behind a gauzy curtain, complete with projected photographs of real courtesans of the era, you realise there are few operatic heroines, and few interpretations of those operatic heroines, quite like this.

La traviata plays at Royal Ballet And Opera until 17 February