VERDI'S LA TRAVIATA / Singapore Lyric Opera / Review

VERDI’S LA TRAVIATA

Singapore Lyric Opera

Esplanade Theatre

Monday (9 September 2013)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 11 September 2013 with the title "Vibrant Verdi in troubling times".

These must be troubling times for Western opera in Singapore. The Singapore Lyric Opera (SLO) is caught in a Catch-22 situation. Due to its small annual budget and limited funding, miniscule compared to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO), it is constrained to just two major productions a year.

When it mounts operas that are less familiar or popular, such as Don Giovanni and Manon Lescaut last year, it plays to small houses and a fiscal deficit. Forced to bring in the revenue and justify its existence, it goes through an ever-perpetuating cycle of warhorses, which invariably involve these six operas – La Traviata, La Boheme, Carmen, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and The Magic Flute.

The cycle has just been completed, and is ready to begin again. Is this healthy for the cultivation of the artform and its appreciation? What happened to experimentation and breaking new ground? Does anyone remember the days when SLO took on Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Verdi’s Macbeth, Gounod’s Faust or even Leong Yoon Pin’s Bunga Mawar?

By all accounts, this year has been an ultra-conservative one, which opened with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly to make up for the adventures of 2012 and 2011 (which had a splendid Salome). And thanks to the Verdi bicentenary, La Traviata has been brought out again, in expense of first time productions of Othello, The Force of Destiny, The Masked Ball or Aida. Did anyone mention this is the year of Richard Wagner and Benjamin Britten too?

To SLO’s credit, what it accomplishes with so little money borders on miraculous, the artistic equivalent of feeding five thousand with two fish and three loaves of bread. Even if the usual suspects were rounded up for the international cast of Traviata, one could be grateful that this was no tired rerun.

A double-take was needed to ascertain that the minx in red seated on the grand piano (above) when the curtain rose was indeed soprano Nancy Yuen in the lead role of Violetta Valery. Kudos to her make-up artist and hair stylist for making her look the part of a pill-popping, alcohol-swilling and heavily botoxed demimondaine opposite Japanese tenor Kota Murakami’s youthful Alfredo (below).

Although her actual age is an industry secret, Yuen is ageless in this role, whipping off the coloratura runs of Ah, fors’e lui… Sempre libera effortlessly and with much natural flair. Her range of expressions grew exponentially, not least in the moving Second Act exchange with Korean baritone Song Kee Chang’s Germont. By the final scene complete with a real hospital bed, she had been aged irremediably but her delivery of Addio del passato and the tender duet Parigi o cara with Murakami held the greatest poignancy.

A technological Traviata, updated to the present.

Director Stephen Barlow had the setting updated to the present, with the cast toting cell-phones, iPads and headphones, and Alfredo attired in t-shirt, jeans and sneakers. There were anachronistic references to louis as currency and carriages as transport, as in the original libretto, but these were minor quirks. Even consumption was not mentioned (Violetta did not cough even once); thus “this disease” might be presumed as HIV. The sets were kept simple, except for fussy screen projections that were too literal (falling pills, playing cards and the Eiffel Tower) or plain barmy (red blood cells whenever “this disease” was mentioned).

The supporting cast was strong, including Lemuel dela Cruz (Gastone), Anna Koor (Flora), Tan Sin Sim (Annina) and Brent Allcock (Douphol), and the SLO Chorus augmented by Filipino singers injected their scenes with vitality and realism. The SLO Orchestra conducted by SSO Associate Conductor Joshua Kangming Tan accompanied with great sensitivity and responsiveness, and has become the pride of the musical theatre scene.

A real hospital bed dominated the final scene.

This production could easily have been felled by over-predictability, but familiarity was not translated into the run of the mill. That is the pride of the SLO. Now someone high up in the National Arts Council needs to have a heart-to-heart talk with opera practitioners about the future of opera in Singapore and possibility of increased funding. SLO can become as big as the SSO, but all it needs is that extra push and lots more cash. 

All photographs by courtesy of Singapore Lyric Opera.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, June 2013)

CHRISTIAN FERRAS plays

TCHAIKOVSKY & BRAHMS

Testament 1337 / ****1/2

The world was robbed of a would-be legend with the suicide of French violinist Christian Ferras (1933-1982), a rare genius who would have celebrated his 80^th birthday this year. His famous 1964 recording of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan on Deutsche Grammophon remains in the catalogue, but this 1957 version with The Philharmonia led by Constantin Silvestri is grittier and more exciting. While he sounds staid and respectful alongside Karajan, here he lets rip with liberties galore. There are some unsanctioned cuts in the first and third movements, but his additional touches in  the 1^st movement’s cadenza have a gypsy élan and flourish that are inimitable.

Ferras is joined by legendary French cellist Paul Tortelier in Brahms’s Double Concerto, a 1962 recording again with The Philharmonia, but presided by Paul Kletzki. Both soloists are well-matched and play with a togetherness that fits like hand and glove. Their exchanges are timed to perfection and unison passages are sung with an evenness that is a joy to behold. Add an exciting rocking rondo finale, this comes close to the perfect performance of a well-loved classic, aided by excellent recorded sound even by modern standards. One only wonders what further riches Ferras could have offered us were he still living today.    

VIVA VERDI

Overtures and Preludes

Filarmonica della Scala / Riccardo Chailly

Decca 478 3559 / ****1/2

While Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) is considered by many as the greatest opera composer ever lived, this accolade would not have been possible if his orchestral writing to precede and accompany the singing was not up to scratch. This celebratory disc for the Verdi bicentenary highlights orchestral music from his operas. The Preludes are brief, and set the mood for each act as the curtain rises. There are no better examples than those written for Act 1 of La Traviata, portraying tenderness and fragility, and Act 1 of Aida, which is intimate but mysterious, and alludes to the Triumphal March to come. 

The Sinfonias or Overtures are longer, more dramatic and may quote melodies from the opera itself. The overture to Nabucco gives away a secret – the rousing Va, Pensiero, better known as the chorus of the Hebrew slaves. As stand-alone music, the best are the overtures for La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny) and I Vespri Siciliani (The Sicilian Vespers), where the violent hand of Fate is most eloquently represented. The longest music is also rarely heard, 19 minutes of Airs de Ballet from Jerusalem, the French production of I Lombardi. Pleasant but not the most inspired of music, it is nevertheless performed with dedication and conviction by the Orchestra of La Scala. Long live Verdi indeed!   

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, September 2011)

MAHLER Symphony No.10
The Philharmonia / London Symphony
Berthold Goldschmidt
Testament 1457 (3 CDs) / ****1/2

When Gustav Mahler died in 1911, he left his Tenth Symphony unfinished. All that existed was a fully orchestrated Adagio, a brief Purgatorio third movement and sketches of three other movements. A number of scholars and musicologists took their turn to “complete” it, but it is Deryck Cooke’s performing version that is most often heard and recorded today. 

This album is a valuable historical document as it presents for the first time on record the World Premiere, performed at the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in 1964 by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Berthold Goldschmidt. The monoaural sound and sometimes ragged playing should not be an impediment to enjoyment and illumination.

But first listen to the 35-minute lecture-demonstration by Cooke himself, a highly lucid and eloquent account of his reconstruction with illustrations on the piano and orchestral fragments. 

Follow up with a 1960 performance of bleeding chunks by The Philharmonic Orchestra for BBC’s Third Programme. It was after this when further sketches were found and with approval from Mahler’s widow that the completed Cooke version became a part of history itself. One does not need to be an aficionado or specialist to appreciate the value of this ground-breaking production.

VERDI Four Sacred Pieces

Hymn of the Nations
Orchestra & Chorus of Teatro Regio, Turin
GIANANDREA NOSEDA
Chandos 10659 / ****1/2

The Requiem Mass was indisputably Giuseppe Verdi’s greatest choral work. This enjoyable album is a handy supplement, gathering his other choral music which share a similar vein of piety and patriotism. First listen to his Four Sacred Pieces, disparate works incorporating his Stabat Mater and Te Deum, some of his most substantial music in traditional settings. 

The Ave Maria and Laudi alla Vergine Maria, both sung a cappella, are gems of intimacy and conciseness. The chorus of Turin’s royal theatre provide good, solid, old-fashioned performances in the best tradition of Italian opera houses.

If Libera me, Domine sounds familiar, it is because this was originally conceived for a projected requiem in memory of Rossini. The requiem did not come to fruition, so Verdi reused it with some changes for his definitive Requiem in memory of Manzoni. 

The curiosity of this disc is the vulgar Hymn of the Nations, composed for the London International Exhibition in 1862. It combines heroic tenor aria (with the excellent Francesco Meli) with a triumphal march (foretelling the pomposity of Aida) and the national anthems of Britain, France and Italy thrown into a contrapuntal fray. Tacky, but who could deny Verdi’s craftsmanship here? Here are the sublime and ridiculous contained within 71 memorable minutes.