“Can you enjoy yourself?” demand two revellers at the start of Violetta Valery’s Act I ball, to which she replies fearlessly: “I intend to.” It isn’t a throwaway line, and Ana Maria Martinez, the soprano entrusted with the title role in the latest revival of Richard Eyre’s production, doesn’t deliver it as such. This fallen woman is living on borrowed time, and knows it. Her tragedy is that her one chance to escape the vapid parties and sugar daddies is destroyed by the bonds of social convention.
Martinez isn’t offered many more opportunities to articulate that plight, though her fiery manner suggests that she would like to. The handsome production that still bears Eyre’s name hasn’t had his guidance for years, and successive revivals (this one is credited to Patrick Young) have drained the energy from his careful direction.
Too many of the set-pieces seem to run on auto-pilot, leaving attention focused on Bob Crowley’s handsome but stifling sets. Only the gaping emptiness of Violetta’s now dilapidated mansion in the final act, offset by the grotesque silhouettes of Parisian carnivalgoers, gives us more than a surface acquaintance with the real nature of the heroine’s demi-monde existence.
And it’s here that Martinez really shines: despairing, defiant, but defeated. The fragility of her light soprano, appealingly coloured with some darker tints, is at its best when it comes to the purely lyric demands of the closing scene, and Violetta’s whispered breaths showed off that softness to a tee.
Elsewhere she is less convincing. The Act I fireworks don’t suit her rapid vibrato and slightly constricted higher register; the passionate declamations of Act II Violetta need a fuller, richer voice to do them justice, as well as a freer spirit not encouraged by this particular staging.
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What Martinez lacks in Verdian style the tenor has in spades. Charles Castronovo’s matinée idol Alfredo sings with open-throated ardour, fine legato and ringing high notes. As yet, the voice seems a shade too small for Covent Garden: with a little more punch and heft his future efforts should be more than memorable. Best of all is Zeljko Lucic’s marvellous Germont: brutish in personality, but sung with great authority.
The orchestra plays decently for Philippe Auguin, though his relentless need to drive the drama onwards unsettles the singers more than once. Robert Gleadow, an ROH young artist, makes his mark as a witty and urbane Marquis. But the society he springs from remains faceless, and that’s the main problem.
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