Love and passion are the twin themes of WNO’s latest Mayflower season, which got off to a triumphant start last night with a sumptuous new production of La Traviata.
Of course, where love and passion go – in the opera world, at least – tragedy is never far behind, and in this tale of a Parisian courtesan’s ill-fated love, there is doom and grief aplenty.
To be honest, Verdi’s heroine Violetta Valery’s chances don’t look good from the start. If you hadn’t picked up on the fact that’s she’s dying of consumption, her fate is handily sign- posted for the audience by having her gravestone epitaph written out across the stage.
Violetta (Katia Pellegrino) gives up her life of society parties and shallow affairs when she meets and falls in love with Alfredo Germont (Alfie Boe). He sets up home with her in the country, but their romance is cut violently short when Germont’s father, fearing that the relationship will jeopardise his daughter’s forthcoming nuptials, persuades her to leave him.
Not surprisingly, the two are eventually reconciled – but Violetta has only hours left to live.
Pellegrino and Boe give powerful performances, and the beautiful and varied score (sung in Italian with English surtitles) is aided by an opulent set.
La Traviata – Welsh National Opera, The Mayflower, Southampton.
Andrew White
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