Review: Fleming consumed by 'La traviata' role
Review:
Fleming consumed by 'La traviata' role
Soprano's powers are tested as
Violetta in HGO production
04/30/2003
HOUSTON – Renée Fleming, who's as close to a superstar soprano as we've got today, is singing her first La traviata for Houston Grand Opera. This is four years after she backed out of playing the consumptive courtesan at the Metropolitan Opera, and five months before she's again booked for the role at the Met, and it's caused quite a stir.
Ms. Fleming's heavy-cream soprano isn't a natural for Verdi, nor is her current penchant for oozing around pitches. Judging from her performance Saturday at the Wortham Theater Center, she's not yet one of history's great Violettas.
Vocally, she was rather underpowered early on, but she was marshalling her resources for demands to come. Her coloratura in "Sempre libera" glowed more than glittered, and diction was pretty consistently sacrificed to sumptuous sound. Particularly early on, upward intervals tended to fall shy of their mark.
But there was a good deal of beautiful singing, and clearly Ms. Fleming had thought a lot about the role. In the opening fête she was almost too hearty a party girl, though she soon made it clear – and quite to the point – that the rejoicing was forced in the face of a tubercular death sentence.
She played the glamour queen part to the hilt, but through it all she was a deeply conflicted woman. Her death scene was touching without being sappy. At the end, with the help of makeup designer Dotti Staker, she even managed to look really spectral.
What made this a uniquely compelling Traviata wasn't its soprano, but the conducting of HGO music director Patrick Summers and the playing of the HGO Orchestra. But obviously sensitive direction by veteran Frank Corsaro played a big part, as did Desmond Heeley's sumptuous Victorian decors and costumes, from Lyric Opera of Chicago.
From the hushed, bittersweet string chords at the start, Mr. Summers made this an unusually mobile – and delicate – Traviata , which was all to the good. Purged of the usual self-indulgent sentimentality, the opera became more credible, more urgent, more emotionally acute.
Paul Charles Clarke's Alfredo had some odd vocal bulges here and there, but the tone was both warm and plaintive and the portrayal a finely nuanced study in obsession. It's rare to hear the role of Georgio Germont, Alfredo's father, sung so amply and expressively as it was by Bruno Caproni. (Mr. Caproni, who's to reprise the role at the Met with Ms. Fleming, was a late replacement for Dwayne Croft, who was sidelined by sinusitis.)
Nor was there a weak link in the rest of the cast. Angela Niederloh was a hearty Flora Bervoix, Patryk Wroblewski a sonorous Baron Douphol, Nicholas Phan an agreeably pungent Gastone, Ethan Watermeier a virile Marquese d'Obigny, Marjorie Owens a warm-toned Annina and Joshua Winograde a dignified Doctor Grenvil. The chorus, prepared by Richard Bado, was top-notch.
E-mail scatrell@dallasnews.com
La traviata will be repeated by Houston Grand Opera at 8 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Wortham Center's Brown Theater, Texas and Smith, Houston. Tickets $20 to $325. Call 1-800-626-7372 (toll-free), or go to www.houstongrandopera.org.
Online at:
http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/overnight/stories/043003dnovelatraviata.2011f.html