Review: LA TRAVIATA, Royal Opera House

Despite many laudable initiatives, most of the public will visit the Royal Opera House for the first time relatively late in life and most will pay plenty for the privilege: but, again, it's important to recognise that there are often affordable (very affordable by West End standards) available for many productions. Crudely put, the venue needs a big Wow! factor to live up to expectations.

And Wow! is exactly what you get.

It's a bit of a hike to get there, but four tiers up in the Amphitheatre, one looks down on a space both immense in its scale, yet somehow intimate in its atmosphere, the layered crescents of seats like a friendly arm thrown around the stage. As the curtain rises, the roof does strange things (like an aircraft's wings preparing to land) which weaves some magic on the acoustics, giving the impression that voices are much closer than they actually are. If faces (and hence acting) isn't too visible at this distance, the spectacle of the chorus work and the big setpieces is enhanced by the eye taking in the whole crowded canvas as well as the close focus of duets.

For those (like me) more familiar with the boutique operas that have become so popular in London over the last ten years, the scale of this production almost makes it an entirely different genre... but not quite, I'm pleased to report.

The sensory delights of the singing and the music, and the power of the story's tragedy, never lose their place at the heart of the experience. Conductor Daniele Rustioni milks his entrance (as maestros do) ostentatiously shaking hands with his concertmaster like they haven't met in years (I love all that showmanship) and then the music swirls round us like a big warm blanket held tight on a cold evening. A full orchestra is a wonderful thing - far below us, it seems to lift us physically. I checked the roof again.

La Traviata is a staple of the ROH repertory, Richard Eyre's production finding a home in the programme at least once every other season - and it's not hard to see why. Based on Alexander Dumas Fils's play, La Dame aux Camelias, it's the heartrending tale of a courtesan and her impecunious nobleman lover, separated by society's disapproval, only to be reunited too late. There are parties, gambling, dancing, boozing, kisses, tears, love, hate and, of course, death, the perspective shifting from crowded scenes of wild extravagance to the most touching of lovers' trysts and most distressing of cruel showdowns.

Joyce El-Khoury holds the tale together as Violetta, the doomed mademoiselle, her voice conveying the full range of emotions as love is won and lost and won again. How these sopranos go through the mill, physically and mentally, without a week in bed to recover, remains a mystery to us looking on. She gets great support from Sergey Romanovsky as her lover, Alfredo, and, especially, Artur Rucinski as his unbending father Germont, who extracts the promise from Violetta that breaks her heart. It's all so luscious in the telling and so callous in the plotting.

In the interval, a dark-eyed beauty with a thick East European accent asked for a photo to be taken of her with the theatre as backdrop. There were a variety of accents around me too, including one that was pure Cockney. On stage, a kaleidoscope of nationalities came together to perform an Italian's adaptation of a Frenchman's novel. To some, that's just the newly derided metropolitan elite at play, but to me, it's a vision of an alternate reality, one in which talent and imagination matter more than the colour of one's passport. It's always felt like a privilege to be a small part of that world, and it's never felt more precious nor more fragile than it does now.

La Traviata continues in the Royal Opera House's Winter Season.

Photo Tristram Kenton

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