London Coliseum
English National Opera
In rep 27 Sep ‚ 16 Nov 2006

This is the English National Opera's first production of La Traviata for a decade. It is part of the ENO's attempt to avoid flops of recent years by rebuilding its stock of dependable productions of popular operas that can be revived time and again (like Jonathan Miller's Rigoletto). I hope this production will not be revived.
      Sean Doran (the ENO's short-lived boss) commissioned the production and brought in Connall Morrison (Associate Artist at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin) to make his debut directing opera. The central idea is to transplant the opera from Dumas's Paris to 1880s Dublin, in order to make religion the reason that Germont objects to the marriage of Violetta and Alfredo. Violetta is a Protestant, trying to marry into a Catholic family, an impossible match in a hypocritical sectarian society. In this version it is her piety that motivates her self-sacrifice, and the tuberculosis and poor social conditions of nineteenth century Dublin that cause her downfall.
      This conceit does not work, and the result is unmoving and unconvincing. It is achieved painfully unsubtly; in the course of a leaden, banal and awkward newly commissioned translation by Stephen Clark, it is simply mentioned that Violetta is a Protestant (an invention not to be found in Piave's original libretto). Not only does this not make sense (the Protestants were in the ascendancy at the time in Ireland), but the ideas, motivations and implications of that radical scene shift are not developed at all. The Irish theme is expressed not in cultural or religious division or through the characters' identities and devotions, but only by the stout-quaffing revelry of Francis O'Connor's Victorian salon sets and Joan O'Clery's bustles-and-sideburns costumes.
      The central psychological fascination of this opera was nowhere to be seen. What motivates Violetta, the "fallen woman", to move from freedom-loving kept courtesan to a dull country life literally beyond the Pale with Alfredo, from the robust woman who stands up to Germont and then changes her mind in an inexplicable trice to make a supreme sacrifice? Emma Bell sings her first Verdi role beautifully, but there is no portrayal of who this woman really is, nor a shred of vulnerability even at the last. In one of the most unbearably tragic scenes in opera the audience was torn between wondering how her consumption had miraculously disappeared for the middle part of the opera and willing her to die quickly, so little did they care. Why does Germont for his part lose all sectarian passion at the end, and is Alfredo motivated by any emotion at all (other than understudy's nerves, in the case of the wooden Dwayne Jones)?
      None of this is assisted by the fact that the essential dramatic time lags between scenes were lost by telescoping three Acts into two. Nor by the crashingly obvious symbolism throughout; Violetta (who starts in red and finishes in white) reaches at the end for the white ray of light from off stage, throws decks of cards around to show life's gambles (although, bizarrely, no actual card-playing occurs during the gambling scene), and to hammer home the continuity of past into present, the ballroom frames from Act 1 remain in the country courtyard and tenement slum where she dies. The result is to trivialise Verdi's humanistic opera (and Alexandre Dumas fils' La dame aux camellias) exploring the problematic figure of the urban prostitute and her agonizing psychological journey.
Maya Lester