La Traviata review – touching and truly moving opens Garsington’s summer season | Classical music

DAy breaks in Paris at the end of one act of La Traviata – and, at Garsington Opera House, open to the surrounding Chiltern countryside, the birds sing the dawn song. If this seems like an interesting but accidental touch in Garsington’s first production of Verdi’s opera, there are many parallels that are deliberate – not in Louisa Muller‘s staging, and in the pit, where the company’s artistic director Douglas Boyd whips the Philharmonia Orchestra through a performance that makes the famous score even more inspiring.

Muller’s play is another fruit of the company’s relationship with the Santa Fe Opera, where it premiered 2 summers ago. It moves forward to the late 1930s, Paris as a city partying on the edge of a cliff – not that you’d know it, except for the blue military uniforms worn by some of the men. We follow Madison LeonardVioletta through the doors, rooms and surroundings of Christopher Oram, a world of marble, art and wrought iron, silvery and brittle. When the daylight begins to shine on Marcus Doshi, the place can look shiny or depressed. The same goes for the residents. Meanwhile we see Violetta’s ghost wandering inexplicably from her deathbed to her salon, where her party guests are waiting, frozen in pastel colors. Later, the same guests come to visit Flora dressed in red, gold and black – Klimt’s clothes, Dix’s face – and they become more passionate and weary of life as Violetta’s illness approaches to consume her.

The cast also includes the central couple from last summer’s L’Elisir d’Amore. Leonard’s Violetta is powerfully sung, her voice steady and full of color; his death scene, which was well-received, is in full swing, marking an unforgettable performance from this rising US singer. Oleksiy Palchykov also matches him well as the dashing young Alfredo, his teno full of joy. Roland Wood brings a fierce authority to his father, Germont, whose encounter with Violetta is viewed harshly: anger mixed with resignation; a vague understanding from him. “I know the sacrifice I want you to make,” he sings, though it’s clear he doesn’t know anything.

Surprisingly for such an experienced conductor, this is also Boyd’s first La Traviata. He, too, brings out many details: the butterflies of the clarinet Violetta hears as he suggests falling successfully in love; the piercing marks when she first refused to obey Germont’s order to leave her son. Above all, there is an urgency, time is running out – which, together with Leonard’s magnetism, makes this a wonderful telling of Violetta’s story. It’s a successful start to the season for Garsington.