Live from Aix 2011: La Traviata

If the festival got off to a slow start Tuesday night with Oscar Bianchi’s enigmatic contemporary chamber opera Thanks To My Eyes, last night’s La Traviata—the second of this year’s five operas—was a rousing triumph.  Staged by Jean-François Sivadier in the courtyard of Aix’s 18th-century Episcopal palace, the festival’s emblematic outdoor theater, Verdi’s inexhaustible warhorse of a romantic tragedy offers a dream-team cast in a powerful ensemble performance: star soprano Natalie Dessay making her European debut as Violetta,  American tenor Charles Castronovo as Alfredo, baritone Ludovic Tézier as his father Giorgio Germont, with Louis Langrée conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

With the first notes of the overture accompanied by birds swirling overhead against the still-blue twilight sky, the production took its place in the annals of Aix Festival magic. Set in a vaguely contemporary but undefined time and place, with a minimalist backstage sort of décor and a motley lot of costumes—a little 1930s, a little 1950s, Alfredo in a white Great Gatsby suit and Violetta in a black velvet bodice and a blue taffeta skirt over a ruffled red petticoat, which she later sheds to reveal a pale, bias-cut satin slip, as if she stepped out of a Toulouse-Lautrec dance hall and into a Jean Harlow movie—a frail and frizzy blonde floozie.

Sivadier uses simple stagecraft sleight-of-hand, turning the single set into the runaway lovers’ garden, with unfurling painted panels of blue sky and flowers, or descending chandeliers to sparkle over an imaginary opulent ballroom. But his focus is squarely on Verdi’s gorgeous music and the three central characters it so brilliantly brings to life. Dessay has long been known as a marvelous comedienne, but in this long and strenuous role she more than proves her mettle as a superb dramatic actress, unafraid to shed her blonde wig and her makeup for the dying heroine’s last act.  Castronovo is one of the best up-and-coming young tenors around, perfectly cast as the romantic Alfredo. And Tézier’s bronze barrel of a voice approaches perfection as the dignified and repentant Germont.

La Traviata continues in repertory through July 24, with Russian soprano Irina Lungu replacing Dessay for four performances July 8, 14, 18 and 22.

Upcoming next: Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, with Sir Colin Davis conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.