English National Opera
The London Coliseum
31 January- 7 March 2002

A simple beauty invests the tale – itself utterly simple, but never stale, however often retold and in whatever guises – of the sacrifice made, for love, by a golden-hearted courtesan. What she sacrifices is her chance of happiness away from the glittering but precarious and questionable life she had led before; and she makes the sacrifice because she is persuaded that it is in the true interests of her beloved and his family.
    With the deftness characteristic of his handling of stories, Verdi picks the crucial nodes in this tale and presents them – diamonds of melody in a glimmering harmonic setting – with marvellous expertise. His makes it a doubly moving tale, and the loveliness of the music is impossible to resist; but in this ENO revival of Jonathan Miller's treatment, and with the exquisite voice and presence of Sandra Ford as Violetta, "La Traviata" touches new heights. It becomes indescribably heart-wrenching, gripping, dramatic; it plots the tragically inexorable consequence of the frustration of love; and its closing scenes – in which Verdi, with his extraordinarily true instincts, refuses to linger after the release of Violetta from her anguish, a release she experiences as the ability to breathe freely and strongly again in the seconds before she dies – is an unsurpassed evocation of loss, love and sorrow.
    Part of the strength of this production lies in the blemishless quality of the singing, staging, acting and musical direction, coming together in an outstanding operatic experience. The roles of Alfredo and Giorgio Germont are both excellently sung and played, and every other member of the singing cast contributes fine voices. But the relish of the whole is Sandra Ford. It is prodigious how, from such a small slender figure, such a power, range, brilliance, clarity, ease and flow of sound can come – never a note forced, and never a note wrong – as if she were a human lark, with a lark's tiny ecstatic throat cascading song as it goes. She is a superb actress too, and plays Violetta with such depth of feeling that, in the exquisitely moving moment when she pretends to Alfredo that she is just going into the garden, but in reality is about to leave him, and again in the death scene at the end, she infuses the drama with truth. She is a singer of the new operatic world, whose stars have technical facility and acting skills of such high excellence that they move their art into new dimensions.
    Mark Shanahan's conducting was unhurried and observant, giving the music space to unfold and then refold itself round the fluxes of drama, jollity, pain, longing, anguish and anger that swell and eddy throughout the action. That does not mean that the tempi are on average slow; they are delicately careful, and seem perfect for the English vocal line, which as a result is glass-clear. Bernard Culshaw's sets achieve lavishness with great economy, and bring La Traviata's world into London's winter with exactly the right setting for the cast's – and Sandra Ford's – wonderful evocation.
AC Grayling