Grand Canal Theatre, Dublin
Talk of opera in Russia and you’re probably talking of Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg or the Bolshoi in Moscow. But the Tchaikovsky Perm State Opera is often described as the next in line, and the Mariinsky company was actually evacuated there for more than two years during the second World War.
In recent years the Perm company has created some ripples with its Gulag Project, which saw award-winning productions of Alexander Tchaikovsky's One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovichin 2009, and Beethoven's Fideliolast year (this latter directed by former Wexford Festival chief executive Michael Hunt) in the setting of gulag camp Perm 36, which is now a museum.
The company's production of Verdi's La Traviata– directed by Sergey Mindrin, with designs by Petr Okunez and Olga Shaishmelashvili – which opened a five-night run at the Grand Canal Theatre on Wednesday, is being marketed as a "spectacular traditional staging".
Well, what the audience was offered on Wednesday was neither traditional nor spectacular. But neither was it absurd or mean.
The opera, which Verdi set in and around Paris about 1700, was given a Great Gatsby-ish setting. It opened with Violetta on a hospital bed at the edge of the stage, tended to by a nurse, with everything that followed being treated as a flashback. The last act was played out in a hospital ward. It's a viable idea, but the treatment was rather laboured by having the hospital bed reappear a number of times, with a double having to take on the role of Violetta in the main action.
The minimalist settings, with much use of mirrored surfaces, created a lot of open space. But the sizeable and handsomely costumed chorus often just stood its ground, and the scene with gypsies and matadors, for instance, had neither gypsies nor matadors nor movement.
The singing was strong and even. The full-toned chorus was always a pleasure, and all the principals had their moments. Tatiana Kuindzhi’s Violetta took some time to settle. She raced through her more florid lines in Act I as if they were some kind of unfeeling vocal exercise. But she carried off her consumptive frailty in Act III with finely spun singing that generated real pathos.
Najmiddin Mavlyanov's Alfredo was firm, too, but there was often a sense of stylistic waywardness, as if he weren't quite tuned in to the idiom of 19th-century Italian opera. He was at his best in the tenderness of the Act III duet Parigi, o cara.
The Germont père of Andrey Baturkin (who arrived for his Act II confrontation with Violetta accompanied by two heavies) was altogether more consistent and stylish, and the warm, soft-grained bass of Oleg Ivanov’s Doctor Grenvil made a strong impression too.
The RTÉ NSO played cleanly for conductor Valery Platonov, whose approach, however, tended towards stiffness and dramatic inertia. In the sense that the singing was the thing, you could certainly call this production traditional.
Runs until Sunday
