Production: Cast: San Francisco Opera have rolled out a brand new manufacturing of Verdi\u2019s La traviata<\/em> and launched top-class singers to the corporate within the three essential roles: South African soprano Pretty Yende, Chilean tenor Jonathan Tetelman and Italian baritone Simone Piazzola.<\/p>\n A hearth alarm emptied the War Memorial Opera House twenty minutes earlier than the scheduled curtain, delaying the beginning by a half-hour (it was rapidly decided to be a false alarm). Once conductor Eun Sun Kim and the three debutants obtained began, the music caught fireplace, and all the things unfolded engagingly in a colourful new manufacturing.<\/p>\n This is the second installment of the corporate\u2019s initiative to create long-lasting units particularly designed to suit the War Memorial stage for \u2018legacy\u2019 operas. The first was Tosca<\/em>, which debuted in 2018 and returned to open the 2021 season. Both are by director Shawna Lucey (a Broadway and opera veteran, just lately named common director of Opera San Jos\u00e9 down the peninsula from San Francisco) and London-based designer Robert Innes Hopkins.<\/p>\n La traviata<\/em> has extra pizzazz, though it nonetheless sits comfortably in a standard fashion. It even reproduces the view from the Rue de Madeleine condo occupied by the nineteenth-century girl \u00a0(Marie Duplessis) who was the mannequin for Marguerite Gautier, the heroine in Alexandre Dumas\u2019s La Dame aux Cam\u00e9lias<\/em>, who in flip was the inspiration for Verdi\u2019s Violetta.<\/p>\n Houston-based Michael Clark\u2019s lighting design made the manufacturing come to life visually. Midday brightness outdoors the trellised background in Violetta\u2019s summer time house in Act II turned to a burnished glow by early night and underlined Violetta\u2019s darkening state of affairs subtly. The grays of pre-dawn in Act IV, the place Violetta lay gravely sick, picked up \u2018sunlight\u2019 via the home windows when she believed, so briefly, that she was nicely once more.<\/p>\n The lighting additionally enhanced the daring colours of Flora\u2019s louche occasion that adopted the summer-home scene, offering a telling distinction with the relative simplicity of the earlier home location. Costume colours made the lead characters straightforward to identify in crowded scenes, and the women\u2019 robes had been beautiful to behold.<\/p>\n Under Lucey\u2019s path, everybody within the solid created distinct characters and interacted with a pleasant lack of artificiality. This was very true of Yende\u2019s Violetta and her tragedy-destined relationship with Tetelman\u2019s Alfredo. Detail after element made issues really feel actual, and moments with Piazzola\u2019s Germont took on the correct quantity of gravitas.<\/p>\n If crowd scenes generally may need benefited from higher visitors administration, there have been telling moments. One got here in Act II, Scene 2 (Flora\u2019s occasion), after Alfredo disgraced himself and humiliated Violetta by showering her along with his playing winnings. One by one, the ladies indifferent themselves from their possessive male companions and surrounded Violetta in a quiet and efficient demonstration of feminine solidarity.<\/p>\n Other particulars meshed particularly with the music. For one, as Alfredo ready to ship his toast on the Act I occasion, he appeared deep in considered what to say. A gesture was timed to the sudden cease Verdi wrote into the music, a second that the majority productions don\u2019t capitalize on. A small factor, however it added to a way that these had been actual individuals.<\/p>\n Vocally, Yende\u2019s Violetta glowed with a wonderful sheen to her voice, and she or he communicated an exquisite vulnerability with seemingly easy appearing. It was a distinctly human portrayal, enhanced by vocal nuances and welcome command of dynamics and refined hesitations. If from time to time she slid up barely into excessive notes, the historically interpolated excessive E-flat on the finish of \u2018Sempre libera\u2019 rang out with startling readability, precisely what one needs from Violetta at that second.<\/p>\n Tetelman deployed a lyric tenor of fluidity and pinpoint readability that made his Alfredo engaging, and he put sufficient vitality into his excessive notes at a number of factors in thrilling duets to match Yende\u2019s. Tall and lanky, along with his assured presence and sound, he at occasions jogged my memory of a younger Alfredo Kraus.<\/p>\n Piazzola performed Giorgio Germont (Alfredo\u2019s father) within the normal stern tones, leavened by a beautiful vocal timbre and rock-solid musicality. That might have led to an outpouring of heat when the character sees Violetta\u2019s despair at what he asks of her, however the voice, and the demeanor, hardly modified.<\/p>\n There had been no weak hyperlinks among the many remainder of the solid. Standouts included the vigorous mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven as Flora, Violetta\u2019s gal pal, and tenor Edward Graves as Gastone. This character is often a cypher, however right here was an actual presence, from the second he launched Alfredo to Violetta to when he tried to fend off the social catastrophe at Flora\u2019s occasion.<\/p>\n As Baron Douphol, Philip Skinner, a San Francisco Opera common, lent his wealthy bass-baritone and deftly confirmed an outdated man\u2019s frustrations at dropping Violetta\u2019s attentions. Bass Adam Lau created a sympathetic and smooth-voiced Doctor Grenvil.<\/p>\n Eun Sun Kim continues to steer the corporate\u2019s musical proceedings with uncanny consistency. Conducting her third opera in two months (beforehand John Adam\u2019s new Antony and Cleopatra<\/em> and Poulenc\u2019s Dialogues of the Carmelites<\/em>), she reestablished a knack for getting stylistically acceptable music out of the singers and the orchestra. Passionate love scenes reached thrilling climaxes, and offended clashes despatched off electrical musical flares. The remaining scene, with Violetta\u2019s loss of life, might have throbbed a bit extra, however it made its level.<\/p>\n As all the time, the refrain contributed a juicy sound and visible presence to the crowds in Acts I and II, and once more within the offstage hullabaloo outdoors Violetta\u2019s condo in Act III.<\/p>\n Harvey Steiman<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n [ad_2]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] United States Verdi, La traviata: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of San Francisco Opera \/ Eun Sun Kim (conductor). War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, 13.11.2022. (HS) Pretty Yende (Violetta) and Jonathan Tetelman (Alfredo) \u00a9 Corey Weaver Production:Director\u00a0\u2013 Shawna LuceyProduction designer \u2013 Robert Innes HopkinsLighting \u2013 Michael ClarkChoreographer \u2013 John HeginbothamChorus director \u2013 John Keene […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-theatre"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"United](\"https:\/\/seenandheard-international.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/world-flags\/images\/flags\/24\/us.png\" "\\"United")
United States<\/span><\/span><\/span> Verdi, La traviata<\/em>:<\/span><\/strong> Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of San Francisco Opera \/ Eun Sun Kim (conductor). War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, 13.11.2022. (HS)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/seenandheard-international.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/image-14-500x331.png\")
<\/strong>Director\u00a0\u2013 Shawna Lucey
Production designer \u2013 Robert Innes Hopkins
Lighting \u2013 Michael Clark
Choreographer \u2013 John Heginbotham
Chorus director \u2013 John Keene<\/p>\n
<\/strong>Violetta \u2013 Pretty Yende
Alfredo Germont\u00a0\u2013 Jonathan Tetelman
Giorgio Germont\u00a0\u2013 Simone Piazzola
Gastone \u2013 Edward Graves
Baron Douphol\u00a0\u2013 Philip Skinner
Marchese d\u2019Obigny \u2013 Timothy Murray
Doctor Grenvil \u2013 Adam Lau
Flora\u00a0\u2013 Taylor Raven
Annina \u2013 Elisa Sunshine<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/seenandheard-international.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/image-15-500x331.png\")