David McVicar's Traviata Will Make You Feel All Tingly Down There

(Above: McVicar's Traviata, Carmen Giannattasio's Violetta - Credit Drew Farrell)

You can't stop the secksinesx & powah of David McVicar's new "Traviata"! Last week, the Scottish Opera was treated to their first new production of Traviata in twenty years: in a new co-production with Welsh National Opera and Gran Teatre del Liceu, McVicar presented a gritty, stripped-down version, devoid of the opening scene "big fashion parade" that we've come to expect. Opera Chic is an unabashed McV fan, even if his old snarks against poor Violetta -- he was quoted as calling the piece -- "'I could never do such a coarse, clumsy, reduction of this woman", he said in 2003, badly misreading Piave's and Verdi's genius work -- anyway he changed his mind and this was his first-ever production of Traviata, and who better to entrust it to than his usual homies, choreographer Andrew George & designer Tanya McCallin.

Italian soprano Carmen Giannattasio -- highly praised by august Corriere della Sera's in last year's Boccanegra in Bologna -- gives Violetta a sultry Italian hawtness -- in a typically McVicarian -- McVicaresque? -- flash of laser insight she's Violetta as fast-thinking hustler, leading Alfredo as Federico Lepre and Germont as Richard Zeller through conductor Emmanuel Joel-Hornak's paces, like a Pied Piper with delicious Italian flesh instead of a silly German pipe.

After Glasgow's Theatre Royal, the production goes to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness, and finally Belfast's Grand Opera House in early in 2009.

(Above: Federico Lepre's Alfredo and Carmen Giannattasio's Carmen - Credit Drew Farrell)

(Above: Carmen Giannattasio's Violetta and Richard Zeller's Germont -Credit Drew Farrell)

(Above: Carmen Giannattasio's Violetta and Federico Lepre's Alfredo - Credit Drew Farrell)

Comments

[Coloratura Tempura]

Lovely!

[Victor]

A period piece? No heroin injections? No go go dancers? No male hustlers in leather chaps? No space aliens?

The avant garde will hate this.

[maura]

I love that it's classic art (no crazy avant-garde stuff) without being stuffy and distant. This is what art is meant to be! Appropriate & approachable.

[Henry Holland]

No shirtless shots of Federico Lepre? :-( :-(

[Henry Holland]

Um, just to clarify, OC, I meant "you mean Federico Lepre doesn't have his shirt off for most of the opera?" not "Bad OC! No tenorhunk shots!".

[Rachel]

Shirtless guys, whatever, I'm used to it but topless chicks? Maybe it's just the prude American in me talking.

[Adrian]

I'm a cast member of this production and would recommend that anyone who can, try and catch it on tour. The show will return to Glasgow early in 2009 if you miss it before Christmas. No shirtless tenors (what a thought!) but plenty of passion.