This season the Royal Opera House has recreated "Richard Eyre's popular production of Verdi's La Traviata, which draws on striking period designs by Bob Crowley to amplify the tensions and confrontations that make Violetta's predicament so tragic and her portrayal so real." Here are three reviews:
A 'Traviata' on shaky ground
By Edward Seckerson [Independent, 18 January 2006]
If Alfredo's love for Violetta is indeed "the heartbeat of the universe", as he so ardently proclaims in the very first scene of La traviata, then this revival is urgently in need of open-heart surgery. It has been a year since the last exhumation of Richard Eyre's tepid staging, since when the temperature has dropped significantly. No fear of the elaborate ice sculpture at Violetta's party melting prematurely now; but some concern that our heroine will actually make it to Act III. There are many ways of dying on the operatic stage and, for Ana Maria Martinez, it began to look as if consumption might not be one of them.
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La Traviata — Royal Opera House, London
Erica Jeal [The Guardian, 19 January 2006]
Nothing fits the post-Christmas mood quite as well as a consumptive heroine coughing herself nobly into the grave - or at least that seems to be the Royal Opera's line, as it once again offers a January dusting-off of Richard Eyre's 1994 production of La Traviata. Several of the cast are retained from last year's performances; the conductor, Philippe Auguin, took over from Solti during the staging's first run. But experience doesn't always pay, and often Bob Crowley's monumental sets threaten to upstage what is taking place within them.
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La traviata, Royal Opera House London
By Richard Fairman [Financial Times, 19 January 2006]
One owner, quite high mileage, still in good condition. The Royal Opera's production of La traviata has barely been out of the repertoire since 1994 when Angela Gheorghiu scored such a hit in the opening performances, but none of the other sopranos who has taken it for a spin has quite made it her own.