Classical preview: Scottish Opera’s La Traviata

In her last production for Scottish Opera, director Annilese Miskimmon has stripped La Traviata to a sinewy minimum

Verdi’s La Traviata cries out for contemporarisation. The composer envisaged that in 1853, when his collaboration with librettist Francesco Maria Piave, to adapt Alexandre Dumas’ play, La Dame aux Camélias, first hit the operatic stage in conservative Venice, but on that occasion he was forbidden by the censors to stage the tale of “the fallen woman” in contemporary terms, lest it upset the sensitive Venetians.

As a result, it was set at a safe distance in the past, 1700, which may have led to its initial lack of success. For as future, braver productions went on to show – and continue to show – this is an operatic shocker whose gutsy realism is as modern as it is universal.

Violetta is a prostitute, living her life as she wishes: a career lady, so to speak, whose clients are A-list aristocracy and pay premium rates. She plays the hard, sexy female card brilliantly, calling the shots and ruling her roost in a way that would earn her the respect of Dragons’ Den’s Hilary Devey; but when the chips are down and the make-up cracks, the old order is restored and the men around her come out on top.

It’s a story, in bare outline, that may conjure up similarities to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, except that Violetta dies of consumption, effectively solving the inconvenience her presence presents to the father of Alfredo, whom she has hopelessly bewitched; while Roberts, in a change to the Traviata ending, is carried off in Richard Gere’s “white charger”, and both – so far as we know – live happily ever after.

For Annilese Miskimmon, the Irish opera director whose small-scale touring production of La Traviata for Scottish Opera opens tonight in Giffnock, contemporising Verdi’s opera is definitely the way to go, but not, she reckons, to the extent of setting it right here and now. Unlike the initial ballsiness of Roberts’ kind-hearted Vivian, and the inevitable softening of Gere’s asset-stripping Edward Lewis, Miskimmon has settled for an updating to 1950s Paris, “where men were men and women were women”.

Miskimmon’s own introduction to La Traviata came initially through silver screen versions of the opera. Anyone familiar with Franco Zeferelli’s 1982 film, set as Verdi intended in 1850s Paris, or even Mario Lanfranchi’s straightforward 1968 costume drama version, will recall their preoccupation with glamour and opulence.

But it was also through this medium, where the close-up lens can pry beneath the surface glamour, that Miskimmon sensed the real tension and vitality of the opera and its personalities. And it’s that microscopic concept that will dominate her new production, which a necessarily skeletal Scottish Opera cast, mainly with piano accompaniment, will tour around 50 of Scotland’s village halls, community centres and small theatres over the coming months – part of its 50th anniversary celebrations.

“I wanted to set it in the 1950s, not in the present, largely because there was still a class structure in place in which the aristocracy held sway, but which was noticeably destroying itself from inside,” she explains. There may have been no element of choice where scale of production was concerned, but as a consequence of audiences being so close to the performers, Miskimmon says, “those elements of corruption and decay, so often concealed behind the glamour in big productions, are laid emotionally bare.”

But what about the extravagant Verdi choruses, the wild party scenes, the dancing Matadors? Is it really conceivable to mount Verdi as minimalist theatre? “Some of my most boring nights at the opera have been at Traviatas packed with performers but failing to make an impact on the central drama,” Miskimmon says. “Verdi only uses the chorus here as a backdrop – it’s not like Simon Boccanegra, where they are a political force with something to say.”

“What usually happens in the first party scene is that Violetta gets lost in the crowd. But when you have less of a massed group, suddenly there she is, centre stage, earning her money as a prostitute. You know instantly what she’s about; it’s rare for that to come over so strongly in full-scale productions.

Scottish Opera staff experienced that in-your-face, zoomed-in scrutiny last week at an in-house preview performance at the company’s headquarters, and in which, says Miskimmon, their response to the appalling and complex dichotomy of Violetta was highly emotional.

“I was reading about prostitution in the run-up to directing this,” she says, “and came across some comments by a modern Nigerian prostitute in which she claimed that ‘prostitution is not a job; it’s a lifetime of fun followed by a lifetime of regret’. This is exactly what happens to Violetta, whose fulfilment and liking for life is instantly washed away by the consumption that kills her.”

Performing the opera in English is also likely to sharpen the impact for close-up audiences, she claims. “It is so text-based, just like Chekhov. But when you hear Violetta say, in English, in the last act that ‘God’s forgiven me’, you sense much more that she is trying to convince herself that what has happened to her – the illness – is not just payback.”

Many of the singers in this fresh Scottish Opera cast are creating Verdi’s roles for the first time. “It’s been a joy to rehearse with them,” says Miskimmon, the former artistic director of Dublin’s Opera Theatre Company, who came into opera as a result of her childhood obsession with Mary Poppins and the Sound of Music (“they are opera as much as anything else,” she believes); and who, following tonight’s opening performance at Eastwood Theatre, heads straight for Denmark to start her new job as combined general manager and artistic director of Danish National Opera.

Among the current touring cast are Elin Pritchard and Linda Richardson, alternating the role of Violetta; and Jesús León and Robyn Lyn Evans as her lover Alfredo. Most of the performances are piano-accompanied – some in mid-run will feature a reduced Scottish Opera Orchestra – though that in no way diminishes the power of the music, Miskimmon insists.

“With piano accompaniment the emotional concentration is amazing; everything becomes driven by the text and the singers. There’s something organic and really exciting about that, which you don’t get with the orchestra accompanying.”

• Scottish Opera’s small-scale touring production of Verdi’s La Traviata opens tonight at Eastwood Theatre, Giffnock, and tours to various venues around Scotland until 24 November. See www.scottishopera.org.uk