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| Aaron Blake,Olga Senderskaya,Maestro Omer Arieli (Elad Zagman) |
From its inception in 2011, audiences
have delighted in the Jerusalem Opera's productions, the high performance
standards the company maintains and in the fact that Jerusalem has an opera
company moving from strength to strength. For the Jerusalem Opera's recent
concert production of Verdi's "La Traviata" (producer: Slava
Kozodoi), musical director/conductor Omer Arieli was joined by the Jerusalem
Symphony Orchestra, the Jerusalem Opera Singers (director: Inbal Brill) and
overseas and local soloists. This writer attended the performance on November
27th 2021 in the Henry Crown Auditorium of the Jerusalem Theatre
Revealing
self-confidence and compositional maturity in his 40th year, Giuseppe Verdi
takes a break from biblical stories and historical dramas to present audiences
with an opera dealing with some of the great moral and social dilemmas of the
19th-century world - prostitution, disease and human passion. Violetta’s
life of pleasure, Alfredo’s declaration of love, her escape with him to the
country, her sacrifice of this new life due to the social outrage of Alfredo’s
father and her death from tuberculosis come together to the sounds of the
waltzes and polkas that had taken Europe by storm, evoking the pleasures of
drink and sensuality. “A whore must always be a whore” was Verdi's furious
response to the censors in Rome who had requested he modify the story of the
Parisian courtesan Violetta to be more acceptable to the tastes of a
conservative public. Indeed, "La Traviata" tells the story of a woman
exploited by a male-dominated society and then cast aside when she becomes a
threat to a bourgeois family’s status. Literally translated as "The Fallen
Woman", "La Traviata" is the tragic tale of Violetta, who
attempts to leave the life she knows behind, in an attempt to finally find true
love.
From the moment the first scene
opens with a grand party of singing and dancing hosted by Violetta, we are
swept into the energetic, vital ambience of the Jerusalem Opera's performance.
With orchestra and conductor occupying most of the stage, chorus and soloists
appear at the front, making for direct communication with the audience and with
each other. In performance that was both convincing and never overblown, the
soloists were well cast: American tenor Aaron Blake as the tender and somewhat
naive Alfredo, his timbral range and timing reflecting each stage of the
unfolding drama, baritone Gabriele Ribis (Italy) as the sanguine, understated
but resolute Giorgio Germont, bass-baritone Yuri Kissin as the kindly Dr.
Grenvil, soprano Inbal Brill as Anina, Violetta's loyal maid, and soloists Oded
Reich (Marquis d'Obigny), Esther Kopel (Flora Bervox), Marc Shaimer (Gastone,
Visconte de Letorieres) and Dmitry Lovtsov (Baron Douphol).. Born in Yaroslavl,
Russia, soprano Olga Senderskaya made for an outstanding Violetta, portraying
each situation and emotion in articulate, communicative and dignified singing
and body language, allowing for each shade of meaning of the text and music to
shine through to the audience. She was exceptional!
With Verdi's music
moving hand-in-glove with Francesco Maria Piave's libretto, Maestro Arieli and
the JSO gave the music a sense of urgency and expectation, emphasizing how
intertwined the orchestral score is with the opera's course and characters
throughout, as the overtures poignantly conveyed the heartbreak awaiting
Violetta and Alfredo. And one never tires of La Traviata's highlights, among
them, “Sempre libera”, in which Violetta laughs off the idea of true love
and vows to live for pleasure, even when she hears the voice of Alfredo outside
her window, .Alfredo’s bubbling "Brindisi" (drinking song), the
symbol of the opera’s good times and joyous hedonism and "Addio del
passato", Violetta’s Act III aria, its music harking back to the dances
and festivities of Act I, her words, however, renouncing her youthful dreams of
love to now accept her approaching death.
The Jerusalem Opera's
concert performance left one feeling that La Traviata's portrayal of the
superficial glamour of 19th-century Paris, as contrasted with scenes of great
intimacy, then culminating in the heart-rending final act, were intense and
meaningful without any need for stage sets and backdrops.
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| Miri Shamir |
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