Dessay takes on Verdi’s Violetta for 1st time

SANTA FE, N.M. — Hey, Anna! Hey, Renee! There’s a new Violetta in town, and she’s staking a compelling claim to the role, orange wig and all.

Natalie Dessay, the French soprano best known for her stratospheric coloratura skills, opened the Santa Fe Opera’s 2009 season Friday night with her first-ever performance as the doomed heroine of Verdi’s “La Traviata,” one of the classic roles of the lyric repertory.

Dessay doesn’t just demand our attention, she screams for it — literally. As she runs on stage at the beginning of Act 1 for an unusually orgiastic party scene, she lets out a couple of startling shrieks that signal the desperation this high-living courtesan feels beneath the surface gaiety.

This most physically daring of opera stars has been given a production by her frequent collaborator Laurent Pelly that plays to her acrobatic and acting strengths. Beneath the lurid orange hair, she wears a strapless fuchsia gown that’s split in front, the better to reveal lots of leg as she is tossed about in the air by her male admirers or jumps among the large, irregular-shaped blocks that make up the abstract set. In Act 2, at her house in the country, she runs barefoot across a grassy lawn dressed in casual slacks and leaps into the arms of her lover, Alfredo, wrapping her legs around his waist.

For Dessay, now in her mid-40s, Violetta is a role she probably could not have sung earlier in her career. But as age has taken away some of her ease at the top of her range, it has added power to her voice down below. Her plaintive tone sounded surprisingly sturdy, failing her only in the Act 3 ensemble where she had trouble being heard over full chorus and orchestra. Throughout the night, she phrased her lines with exquisite sensitivity and shading, running into trouble only once, when the extended final high note of “Addio del passato” seemed to fade in and out.

Many sopranos find the coloratura challenges of the Act 1 showstopper, “Sempre libera,” hurdles to be gotten over, but Dessay reveled in them, complete with a ringing high E-flat at the end.

Her debut as Violetta comes by coincidence less than a month after two other leading prima donnas have scored triumphs in the role. Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, singing the part for the first time in the United States, gave a series of sensational performances in San Francisco, while American soprano Renee Fleming captivated the critics at London’s Royal Opera House.

With this memorable performance, Dessay shows she is easily in their league.

Her co-stars offered much to admire as well. Saimir Pirgu, a young Albanian tenor, has an attractive voice that gained in strength and confidence as the evening wore on. It was a treat to hear him take the optional high C at the end of his cabaletta. His acting was vivid, too, especially his remorse in Act 3 after he has publicly humiliated Violetta.

Baritone Laurent Naouri, Dessay’s husband in real life, made a strong impression as Giorgio Germont, Alfredo’s father, who persuades Violetta to renounce her lover to save the family honor. Dressed in top hat and top coat, he cut a daunting figure of bourgeois propriety and sang with supple grace. Much taller than his wife, he loomed over her forbiddingly in the first moments of their encounter, standing on one of the stone blocks while she cowered on the stage below.

Pelly’s direction introduces some unscripted action during the preludes to Acts 1 and 4, beautifully played by the orchestra under conductor Frederic Chaslin. To begin the opera, he has Alfredo watch Violetta’s funeral procession in a too-obvious foreshadowing of the tragic ending. More effective is his use of the Act 4 introduction. The previous scene ends with Violetta facing the chorus, her back to the audience. During the music that follows, the women surround her and change her from a party dress into a nightgown, while the men cover over the scenery with white sheets. When the chorus disperses, she is lying on her deathbed.

The Santa Fe season, which runs through late August, continued the following night with an engagingly sung performance of Donizetti’s comedy “L’Elisir d’Amore.” The spirited lead singers, all former apprentices with the company, were soprano Jennifer Black as Adina, tenor Dimitri Pittas as Nemorino, baritone Patrick Carfizzi as Sergeant Belcore and bass-baritone Thomas Hammons as Dr. Dulcamara.

Unfortunately, director Stephen Lawless decided to update the action, turning Nemorino from a peasant into an auto mechanic and giving Belcore’s soldiers small U.S. flags to wave (well, it was the Fourth of July.) But conductor Corrado Rovaris kept the intoxicating score bubbling along, starting with an overture whose strains drifted off magically into the New Mexico night (the opera house is built with sides and rear open to the sky.)

Later in the season, baritone Lucas Meachem will star in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”; soprano Patricia Racette will play the lead in a new opera based on Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter” (music by Paul Moravec, libretto by Terry Teachout); and Christine Brewer will sing in Gluck’s “Alceste,” her first staged opera appearance since her abrupt withdrawal from the Met’s revival of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle last spring.

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