At Dallas Opera, a Spendid ‘Traviata’ Rings in New Season
/By Truman C. Wang
10/23/2024
Photo credit: Kyle Flubacker
Javier Camarena (alfredo), Yaritza Véliz (violetta)
This month, the world’s classical press descended on Dallas for the historic Ring cycle at the symphony hall. Not to be outdone, next door at the Winspear Opera House, on Friday October 18, the Dallas Opera launched its 2024/25 season with Verdi’s La Traviata – featuring an intriguing carousel set from this summer’s Santa Fe Opera, and an arresting young soprano (also from Santa Fe) in the lead role.
La Traviata has a hallowed history in Dallas. It inaugurated the opera company’s first season at the Texas State Fair music hall in 1958 with Maria Callas (in a performance described by biographer Michael Scott as “heavenly flawed”.) All subsequent sopranos singing the consumptive courtesan in Dallas must inevitably be compared to La Divina, including Yaritza Véliz (Violetta number 9), a 33-year-old Chilean soprano in her U.S. role debut.
I was impressed by Miss Véliz’s expressive and dramatically intense singing. My own vocal preference for Violetta is a light coloratura-soprano. Miss Véliz has a big and beautiful lyric soprano voice: the act 1 coloratura in “Sempre libera” were well-articulated, better than many lighter-voiced Violettas I have heard; the act 3 “Addio del passato” had a finely floated line, not weighed down by any heaviness or chest tone. Several details betrayed her relative inexperience in the role: “Dite alla giovine” in act 2 duet, “Alfredo, Alfredo di questo core” in act 2 finale, as well as many key recitatives were all sung much too loudly when they needed more subtle, imaginative handling. But this is a promising talent; Miss Véliz is potentially a great Violetta.
Javier Camarena, the Alfredo, has a pleasing, bright tenor and sang the role with great dramatic force. Alfredo Daza, the Germont, might be a fine actor particularly in the powerful act 2 duet with Violetta, but his baritone had too many gravels in it that muddled up the words, and lacked a firm line to support the slow tempo in “Di provenza”. The excellent Dallas Opera Chorus sang with firmly focused tones and clean diction.
Iván López-Reynoso, the conductor from Mexico, showed a keen Verdi style in a reading full of rich details and dynamic thrust. The delicate violin trills which decorate the love theme in the act 1 prelude, the orchestral fury that accompanies Violetta’s “Amami, Alfredo!” were among the many orchestral highlights. The 2200-seat Winspear opera house, built in 2010, has a modern exterior and a traditional horseshoe 4-tiered auditorium. The sound from the main floor where I sat was clear and well-balanced for orchestra and voices. I could hear every spoken word in the letter scene and the beautifully-played clarinet solo.
The co-production was originally designed for the smaller Santa Fe stage. One notices a lot of dead black space behind the spinning carousel set, but after a while one’s focus begins to shift to the small, narrow sets that the director Louisa Muller calls “a series of episodes as Violetta reflects on her past”: The carousel spins during scene changes to reveal a boudoir, a great hall and a patio; it also spins during instrumental preludes to reveal flashbacks of a bittersweet romance. The handsome 1930’s Parisian décor and whimsical Mardi Gras costume party are all vastly entertaining.
Additional performance dates for La Traviata are October 20, 23, 26 (livestreamed),27. In the October 27 performance, soprano Sara Gartland sings the role of Violetta and tenor Bekhzod Davranov makes his debut in as Alfredo.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.