Everyone’s favourite opera lives up to expectations

It might be 169 years and been done to death, but there’s a reason why the woke crowd can’t kill off this classic opera, writes Phil Brown.

I know Groucho Marx didn’t care that much for the opera. In his 1935 comedy film A Night at The Opera he makes that pretty clear. And I was with him until I found I was actually starting to enjoy opera.

In recent years I have come to love it for all the right reasons – the singing, the sets, the history. All that and more.

But they keep trotting out the same old operas which is a bit tedious isn’t it? Well, actually it’s not because the canonical works still stand up even though the woke crowd is trying to kill them off.

La traviata is an opera that has been done to death, death being the operative word. Because any good opera, like any good Shaksperian tragedy, ends in a death and you don’t need to have a spoiler alert to know that the heroine of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata croaks in an untimely fashion. She takes two and a half hours (with an interval) to do that. When I interviewed the star soprano, Lorina Gore, who plays her, before the show I asked her about the croaking and she told me that the director, Sarah Giles, was still working on the ending a week out from Thursday’s opening night in the Lyric Theatre at QPAC. Yikes.

La traviata tells Alfredo Germont and Violetta’s doomed loved story. Picture: Jade Ferguson

Let me start at the end by saying the final scene was moving and brilliantly realised. Which capped off a fabulous production that was everything an opera should be, for me at least.

I prefer serious operas to frivolous ones with complicated plots.

La traviata is pretty straightforward really and Sara Giles has directed it so that it is clear and focused and you have the surtitles to help since it’s in Italian. I get confused sometimes but not this time and let me tell you, if I can understand what’s going on you will too.

Set in 1850s Paris which is beautifully evoked thanks to award-winning set and costume designer Charles Davis (there are some pretty fancy frocks) it’s the story of Violetta (Lorina Gore) who is, well, a happy hooker, in the beginning at least. Oh wait a minute, they called them courtesans, didn’t they?

La traviata will run until July 23.

Anyway she’s involved in the world’s oldest profession and the opening scene makes that very clear with a rather realistic touch which I will leave it to you to notice.

She falls in love with Alfredo Germont (Kang Wang) and he loves her too which is not acceptable to his father, played with gravitas and emotional depth by Jose Carbo. Let me just say that while the whole company is terrific (Hayley Sugars is a treat looking like someone from Rocky Horror) these three carry the show and they are all world class. Lorina Gore is a wonderful actor and singer and I believed her Violetta utterly. Kang Wang is nothing short of a superstar, a Brisbane-trained tenor who now struts the opera stages of the world. He is, well, magnifico. And Jose Carbo is such a solid performer and the pathos and depth this baritone brings to his role is impressive.

Lorina Gore and Kang Wang star in La traviata for Opera Queensland – Picture: Richard Walker

Of course the love between Violetta and Alfredo is doomed otherwise there would be no opera. And therein lies the tension although they do reunite eventually and that is redemptive although it’s too late by then. It’s a simple story in the same way that Macbeth or Hamlet is simple and tragic. And this production does have the power of a Shaksperian tragedy.

This opera is 169 years old and it still works and Opera Queensland’s production is fantastic and I think it would be a great opera to see even if you weren’t sure you liked opera. And the music is utterly beautiful and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra under Dane Lam is the foundation for everything.

And as I said, I could follow it so you should be able to as well.

I reckon even Groucho Marx would have liked it.

La traviata is on in the Lyric Theatre at QPAC until July 23