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No age limits for 'Traviata' at AVA

La Traviata is about renewal - of young emotions seizing the old at heart, of heroic personalities finding greater life purpose amid financial ruin. In our current state of political and economic flux, it's no surprise that there's so much heat surrounding Academy of Vocal Arts' eight-performance run of La Traviata. The four Center City performances sold out before opening night. The Saturday audience, primed to commune with it, was rewarded indeed.

Violetta and Alfredo are sung by soprano Jan Cornelius and tenor Michael Fabiano in this production.
Violetta and Alfredo are sung by soprano Jan Cornelius and tenor Michael Fabiano in this production.Read more

La Traviata

is about renewal - of young emotions seizing the old at heart, of heroic personalities finding greater life purpose amid financial ruin. In our current state of political and economic flux, it's no surprise that there's so much heat surrounding Academy of Vocal Arts' eight-performance run of

La Traviata

. The four Center City performances sold out before opening night. The Saturday audience, primed to commune with it, was rewarded indeed.

AVA hasn't presented the opera since 1993 - strange, since it exemplifies the kind of drama-packed lyricism that's particularly characteristic of singers who enter this operatic finishing school. While some companies scrounge for one soprano to sing the title role of Violetta, AVA has it triple-cast for the non-Philadelphia performances in Warrington, Haverford and Camden (which haven't sold out).

Singers spend lifetimes studying the Alexandre Dumas-based characters in this tale of a tubercular courtesan finding true love at the 11th hour. But alert first impressions can be valid; Verdi takes care of Violetta's world-weariness in his eloquent coloratura vocal writing, so in all other respects, young-singer interpretations are welcome.

Then again, passages that might be helped by the wisdom of age - the protracted final death scene that's crucial to the title role - are the ones where young soprano Jan Cornelius nailed Violetta. She shrewdly projected the stages of illness, from resignation to denial, that are so smartly sewn into the opera itself, and phrased with great confidence and specificity.

Though her robust vibrato initially gave the music an indistinct pulsation, the voice settled in so well that even amid occasional hiccups, you still had the exhilaration of hearing Violetta sung with a headlong fearlessness.

Her lover, Alfredo, is so uncomplicated that Michael Fabiano was able to concentrate on looking handsome and singing with style - albeit with asterisks. He's said to be attracting talent scouts. Hmmm. He's the real thing, tenorwise, but the thrilling sounds he makes in his upper register fade to gray lower parts in his range.

As his father, baritone Octavio Moreno had the opposite problem: His characterization was in broad strokes that threatened to tip the opera toward melodrama; only later did you realize there was much cultivated vocalism going on. Maybe he's not

the

answer to the Verdi baritone shortage, but he's

an

answer.

The ultimate catalyst in this production was conductor Christofer Macatsoris. This is the kind of repertoire he learned from the Italian maestros of the Maria Callas generation. I expected to hear one of the great readings of the opera and, orchestrally speaking, I got it. The big tunes always had strong theatrical undercurrents. Everything in between conveyed, in endlessly varied manifestations, the harshness beneath the sparkling surfaces of Violetta's world.

The main turnoff was Dorothy Danner's staging. Though she previously has exhibited considerable resources with AVA and Opera Company of Philadelphia, this venture reflected one irrelevant decision after another. A spectral figure in black dangled diamonds in Violetta's face. Who cares? A man hobbled on two canes in the party scenes. Why? And so much action was packed onto the tiny stage, you were reminded of '50s-era frat pranks with overstuffed phone booths. A director of Danner's caliber should have known better.

'La Traviata'

Music by Giuseppe Verdi. Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. Conducted by Christofer Macatsoris, directed by Dorothy Danner, set design by Peter Harrison, costumes by Val Starr.

Cast: Jan Cornelius (Violetta), Ariya Sawadivong (Flora), Nina Yoshida Nelsen (Annina), Michael Fabiano (Alfredo), Octavio Moreno (Germont).

Performed at the Academy of Vocal Arts tonight and Thursday; Friday at Central Bucks South High School in Warrington; May 13 and 15 in Haverford; May 17 at the Gordon Theater at Rutgers University in Camden - all at 7:30 p.m.

Ticket information: For Central Bucks, 215-862-2526; for all other performances, 215-735-1685 or

» READ MORE: www.avaopera.org

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