La Traviata by Verdi took the stage at the Montreal Opera on Saturday at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. It is a colorful show, marked by the beauty of its setting, model direction and the fair and sensitive incarnation of the heroine.
La Traviata co-produced by the Opéra de Montréal is a beautiful show, as is The Marriage of Figaro at the start of the season were a “beautiful spectacle”. By this qualifier, we designate intelligent production, carried out with culture and taste. It is truly singular that such heights of refinement have been promoted by such offbeat campaigns, at odds with the real artistic proposal.
Pretexts
In La Traviata by Alain Gauthier, Violetta’s fate is indeed to be, apart from the arrival of Alfredo in her life, the toy of destiny and that of men. Their desire and their money, first. Then their moral power (embodied by Germont senior), then.
As such, it is healthy to make a clean sweep of this “Josephine Baker” story and take it for what it is. First, a pretext to leave the field free to the brilliant set designer, costume designer and props designer Christina Poddubiuk so that she can have fun and impress us. Then, a trick to force the engagement of black singers in the title role, which could only enhance the image of the co-producing companies and anticipated, at the time of the project’s conception, a current trend.
The great actress and free woman Joséphine Baker would have sent this fat bourgeois, Catholic, misogynist and infatuated moralist Giorgio Germont to pasture. And the scene wouldn’t have been sad! So Violetta is black (but the racism side is not used in the attitudes of rejection of the Germont family), and the show takes place in an exceptionally beautiful and refined Art Deco setting. End of this chapter.
Alain Gauthier’s work is excellent and very effective in the layered placement of the chorus in Act I and Act 2.e painting from act II. Their movements are natural. There are a number of good ideas like Douphol and Alfredo stopping on the staircase at the end of Act II, predicting the duel to come.
But unexpectedly, this superb spectacle gave us an incredible “Kapo tracking shot” type moment. The “Kapo tracking shot”, one of the strongest concepts in cinema (it relates to a review by Jacques Rivette, in 1961, of a film by Gillo Pontecorvo, subsequently theorized by the great critic Serge Daney), is the moment of the absolute “it can’t be”, the second that kills. It’s when Germont senior wipes his eyes at the moment when Violetta renounces Alfredo. But at this moment again, from the height of his morgue, Violetta is for him a “thing” which must be erased. Germont is on a mission/manipulation so that she abdicates. How could such an impossible, incredible, “kapoistic” gesture have germinated in what mind?
Great leader
Musically this Traviata is above all driven by the exemplary direction of Jordan de Souza. The word “Scope” is used literally, with respect to the singers, in the nuances, the phrasing, the widening of the sound spectrum (the depth of inevitability through the bass). Indication of grandeur, before Act III, the leader is hidden in the pit so that his entrance does not provoke applause and we enter into the drama of Violetta’s death.
Talise Trevigne is an excellent Traviata, not a huge voice, but a sensitive and refined singer with the right inflections, conveying the exact emotions. Disappointment on the part of James Westman, an old hand in the role, but whose singing (at only 51 years old) is syllabic instead of deploying a beautiful Verdian line. Antoine Bélanger had taken Rame Lahaj’s place as Alfredo during the week without the Montreal Opera deeming the information relevant. After a fairly unstable first act, the Quebec tenor found his feet from the start of Act II, making a very honorable appearance in this unattractive room for voices.
Very good line-up of supporting roles, where tenor Angelo Moretti stood out as Gastone and Doctor Grenvil from bass Jean-Philippe McClish, and excellent chorus prepared by Claude Webster.