Critical Thoughts: Our Lyric Season Closes with Old Favorites Traviata and Boheme

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Our Lyric Season Closes with Old Favorites Traviata and Boheme

Here’s a belated note about two wonderful operas we saw, moreover heard, this past winter (which only ended the day before yesterday, hence I didn’t realize I was so dilatory in posting). Actually, some recent Lyric Opera promotional materials spurred me to write. The Lyric, understandably needing to promote itself these days perhaps more than ever before, markets itself as providing beautiful musical art that everyday people can (and should) enjoy while simultaneously casting itself as a vehicle for a more rarefied opera lifestyle. High-definition DVDs played on big screens with surround sound and an ever more-juvenile pop culture are taking their toll.

Verdi’s La Traviata and Puccini’s La Boheme have of course some great similarities. Each is a story centered on a Parisian woman who wins and then loses at love, only to be reunited with her lover just before dying from tuberculosis. Each opera is its composer’s most popular – and not for nothing is that true, as they are so full of beautiful music each is the equivalent of a greatest hits album.

The Traviata production featured Albina Shagimuratova as Violetta, Giorgio Berrugi as her lover Alfredo, and Zeljko Lucic and his father Germont. In recent years Lyric patrons have heard the wonderful voices, and seen the wonderful acting, of Shagimuratova and Lucic, while Berrugi was very strong in his Lyric debut. Boheme starred Maria Agresta as the ill-fated Mimi, Michael Fabiano as her lover Rudolfo, Ann Toomey as her friend Musetta, and Zachary Nelson as his friend Marcello. Agresta and Nelson were heard last season in Puccini’s Turandot.

Both productions featured strong singing and acting, with sets that were visually traditional yet appealing to a more modern sensibility – no wacky reinterpretations here by self-centered directors.

Lyric patrons won’t see these two gems for a while. Traviata and Boheme were last produced in 2013, so it’s maybe a 5-6 year cycle. Next year Luisa Miller and Madama Butterfly will provide our Verdi and Puccini fixes, spiced up with a production of selected scenes from Donizetti’s The Three Queens and Rossini’s Barber of Seville. But for now Lyric patrons have warm weather to get through.

R Balsamo