Though the trip to my seat at the Lyric Opera House -- home of the Baltimore Opera Company -- was similar to the journey of toothpaste through a dried tip, it was oddly satisfying as I squeezed my way through an eager mass of anxious yet slow-moving, glitzed-out sophisticates on Saturday night. The beautiful hall, ornately embellished with gold and bronze, was full to the brim, vibrating with excitement.
The audience buzzed, prepared to hear Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata. The libretto, written by Francesco Maria Piave, is set in and around 1850s Paris. In the story, the courtesan Violetta Valery, suffering from consumption, sacrifices her affair with the man she truly loves to salvage his relationship with his family. She and her true love -- Alfredo Germont -- are briefly reunited, moments before her death.
Shortly after an enthusiastic "Star Spangled Banner" (the ultimate marriage between any opera's stage and audience), the curtains rose, exposing a wall rising from the floor, fully tiled with mirrors. The massive structure stopped tilting upwards at a 45-degree angle, granting the audience the ability to see what was going on everywhere on-and off-stage.
Due to the mirror-vision phantoms moving about immediately over the performer's heads, it was often difficult to know where to focus one's attention.
If at first the audience may have raised its brows, suspicious of the giant mirror acting as an acoustical aid to brighten up a muffled hall, all brows dropped with the first sounds from the singers -- they hardly carried to where I was sitting in the parquet.
The opera commenced with a shaky Overture, through which the audience frequently noticed the conductor, Maestro Julius Rudel, loosening his reigns, allowing the orchestra to separate. Fortunately, he did have a clearly structured musical idea that kept the rest together enough to reach a certain level of professionalism in performance, while keeping the audience sitting uneasily in their seats for all the wrong reasons.
Act 1 is set at a party in the home of Violetta Valery, where she is introduced to Alfredo Germont, with whom she falls in love instantly after he confesses an undying passion for her. However, the first act comes to a close with her resolve to stay a "free woman," indulging in all of life's pleasures. Having been introduced to Violetta's capricious character in the first act, it does not come as a shock to see that she changed her mind yet again by the next set, and moved in with Alfredo in the suburbs of Paris, just three months later.
Giovanni Germont, Alfredo's father, then appears on the scene, accusing Violetta of ruining his son's life in order to support her truth. Still, Violetta decides to leave for the sake of the happiness of her lover's family but does not reveal the true reason why she agrees in the note she writes to Alfredo. When he sees his estranged Violetta at a party in Paris later that night, she lies to him, telling him that she is in love with someone else and securing an immediate end to their relationship.
His fury, however, drives him to viciously throw a wad of money at her so as to pay her off for her supposed services. Violetta's health worsens as a result of her anxiety over her harsh separation from Alfredo, and she lies dying from consumption in the final act, when news comes of Alfredo's return. But now, he knows the truth about her motives for abandoning him. Violetta dies in her lover's arms in the last moments of the opera, singing her last words ever so sweetly: "What joy."
Despite her serpentine and seductive movements, the beautiful soprano, Elena Kelessidi failed to impress the audience with her voice. She had an incredibly precise tone that owned the highest and lowest of pitches she sang, but it was not nearly as thick and juicy as what her role as Violetta Valery called for -- and simultaneously not as crisp or delicate as my ears would have liked for her to be.
Yes, she sang expressively; at times she was even able to grab the audience by the throat, forcing us to suffer with her. Kelessidi's incredible presence on stage overpowered the rest of the singers entirely, only rivaled by the noble presence of baritone Ned Barth as Giovanni.
From the moment Barth presented himself on stage, his imposing stance demanded respect and full attention. What followed was a rich, viscous tone that filled the hall, beating all acoustical obstacles with which it was faced. Where he lacked significantly in expressive variety, he made up in presence and conviction, holding a strong, rarely emotional character, without which the production would have appeared to be an overly pansy, weak-plotted melodrama.
If there was any truly dissatisfying element of this production of La Traviata, it was tenor Marcus McConico's performance as Alfredo Germont. In addition to his blatant vocal deficiencies (the delicate-voiced soprano covered him the entire time), the man lacked in musicality and a basic enthusiasm.
He proclaimed undying love for Violetta in the same phlegmatic manner as (according to the English translations of the libretto broadcasted above the stage) he expressed his rage at his father, and as he greeted others on stage.
McConico's metallic, whiny voice kept the music sagging as he sang with a dynamic range of a possible mezzo forte to a forced forte-and-a-half. The man didn't even care to follow (or lead) the conductor or pay attention to others singing with him, causing the timing of the music to become heavy and stagnant. Fortunately, the impressively costumed chorus was able to support McConico when they were available and on stage.
Though baritone Barth did receive a spirited standing ovation for his performance on Saturday, the audience did not pretend to be thrilled with the rest. Still, the experience of going to a live opera production to see so many musicians and artists come together and create beauty never fails to generate a plethora of ideas and opinions, undoubtedly spurring significant internal growth.
