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by Cynthia Hill
"God can forgive, but man never will." Courtesan Violetta Valery, asked to renounce the lover who has been her spiritual redemption in "La Traviata," makes a passionate indictment that cut into the conscience of the mid-19th century.
The story is a perennial favorite, but it's hard to grip its stunning contemporary impact without understanding the era in which a "respectable" girl, once seduced, had little recourse except the streets. If she were lucky, relatively lucky, that is, she found her way in Violetta's demimonde where she could rub elbows (and a good deal more) with established society--but be forever banned from its sunlight.
West Bay Opera's current "La Traviata" is not the first in recent memory, but given the fine cast of this production, one is grateful for the repetition.
With the obvious exception of Richard Nickol's outstanding tenor, however, this production does not win one over from the curtain rise: soprano Dvora Stoller makes a charming, graceful and beautiful Violetta, but not a moving one until act two, when her performance frees itself from more conventional mannerisms and reveals her interpretation of a high-strung, quicksilver Violetta, as fragile psychologically as she is physically, and as emotionally responsive as a violin string.
From then on, the evening belongs to these two West Bay newcomers. Stoller is a veteran of the San Francisco Conservatory's Opera Theatre and the San Francisco Opera Chorus, as well as a finalist in the Bel Canto Foundation competitions. Nickol, a graduate of San Francisco's Opera Center's Merola program, was a finalist in the prestigious Metropolitan Opera Competition. Dramatically, his Alfredo leans toward the repetitive motif of a short, pudgy man constantly running for the exits, but his voice is undeniably superb and more than makes up for any acting deficits.
Other West Bay Opera debuts: Music Director Ernest Frederic Knell is Associate Chorus Master for the San Francisco Opera, and Stage Director Sandra Sachwitz Bernhard is an Assistant Director with the San Francisco Opera and an acting coach and instructor for the Merola Opera Program.
The story of the repentant, consumptive courtesan became an instant, popular classic when Alexander Dumas fils wrote "La Dame aux Camellias," upon which the opera is based. In 1848, he dramatized his own novel for the stage.
Verdi had his own reasons for resonating with the material, creating one of his early masterpieces a scant one year after Dumas' play premiered. Dumas was obsessed with the young demimondienne Alphonsine Plessis, who died of consumption in 1847. Verdi had a healthier passion for the more fortunate Giuseppina Strepponi, the "fallen woman" and gifted soprano who lived with Verdi--first "in sin" and then as his second wife--until she "possessed of a fortune that places her beyond of reach of need," Verdi wrote. "Neither she nor I render account of our actions to any man."
Violetta Valery had no such luck and no such defender. Partly, it's a matter of taste: She falls for the passionate but immature Alfredo Germont, still very much under the thumb of his father, whose chief interests lie in protecting his family from shame and making sound matches for his children.
Baritone Leland Morine's Germont Sr. was an audience favorite, and he stole some of the the finest moments in the opera. Some may have trouble, as I did, adapting to his overly imposing presence--a large man slowly strutting the stage with a cane, which seems borrowed from another opera.
As in all West Bay Opera productions, performances alternate: Marta Johansen is the alternate Violetta, Mark Hernandez is Alfredo and Robert Presley is his father.
The opera is in Italian, with supertitles that have an uncanny way of failing at crucial moments in the emotional drama. Read the libretto first.
La Traviata
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