OPERA REVIEW : A Quirky ‘Traviata’ : Music Center Season Opens With Polixa Staging From Spain

The Music Center Opera, which dares take few financial risks in these troubled times, opened its season Thursday night with an almost new, almost compelling “La Traviata.”

Both almost s are necessitated by the physical production staged by Helmut Polixa, in his U.S. debut, and designed by Kathrin Kegler (sets) and Ramon Ivars (costumes). Following the awkward but popular trend of lend-lease economics, Los Angeles imported this often quirky, faintly expressionistic “Traviata”--lock, stock, heroine and camellia tree--from Barcelona, where it was first seen last March.

The quasimulticultural result suggests nothing so much as a trendy mishmash. It finds an American company importing Spanish decors and an ultra-German director to showcase a Chilean soprano and a Belgian baritone in a quintessential Italian opera that takes place in France.

None of this would matter so much as a quiver, or quaver, if the collaboration had managed to shed new light on the old hum-along masterpiece. Unfortunately, the illumination attempted by Polixa and his inventive accomplices remained rather shady.

Don’t misunderstand. This is not a far-out “Traviata.” It does not end with the heroine dying in an AIDS ward, as is the current case at the New York City Opera. It does not take place under water, on the moon or in Sveti Stefan. It has not been drastically updated (although some of the ladies’ dresses do suggest a period later than the mid-19th Century identified in the synopsis). We should be thankful for faint favors.

This is just a silly, fussy, busy, moderately perverse “Traviata.” It offers a minor demonstration of uninspired willfulness on the part of yet another modern director who doesn’t trust the composer.

Polixa cannot resist an intrusive cliche. Like too many of his contemporaries, he raises the curtain for distracting pantomime during the preludes. Before the first act, he shows us a flirtatious Violetta impersonating Dolly (as in “Hello”) amid a chorus line of snazzy suitors. Before the last act, as darkness looms, he shows us a pathetic Violetta scorned by the same gents. Ah, symbolism.

The action, like the scenery, fluctuates between realism and stylization. Violetta’s glamorous salon has no chairs and no mirrors (but the consumptive heroine still manages to notice how pale she

looks). Everyone spends a lot of time lolling on the floor. At one point, for no discernible reason, the ailing courtesan is carried about while reclining on a couch.

During the baritone’s great, calm, organ-grinder aria, Polixa sends the tenor pacing around the stage in a nervous frenzy. The baritone should sue.

During Violetta’s heart-rending--well, it ought to be heart-rending--declaration of love, the director asks the soprano to grab and twitch the branches of a monstrous tree, thus showering the stage with her favorite petals. Flora’s party in the elegant Paris of 1850 becomes a masquerade orgy in a nightmarish bordello.

Subtlety isn’t this director’s forte. Banality is.

Oops. I almost forgot the denouement. During their rapturous but doomed reunion-duet, Violetta unwraps two surprise gifts from Alfredo: a ready-made wedding gown and a bridal veil. It seems strange that she would seem so deliriously happy yet sing nary a word about such momentous presents. No wonder she goes on to confuse her death scene with a mad scene.

The uneven singers assembled for the occasion deserve credit for keeping straight faces while enacting Polixa’s charades. It couldn’t have been easy.

Top honors go to Veronica Villarroel, the attractive 29-year-old Chilean soprano who waltzed, rolled, vamped, collapsed, yearned and suffered on command, with considerable conviction and reasonable intensity. Her bright, wide-ranging tone sometimes turned hard or edgy under pressure, and she tended to smudge the fioriture. But she knows how to rise to mighty climaxes (no higher than D-flat), knows how to sing softly, and knows how to pull out the terminal emotive stops. One can only hope that she doesn’t push her formidable but fragile resources too far, too fast.

A similar hope was aroused by Keith Olsen, the American tenor cast as Alfredo. He may lack the ultimate aura of Latin passion, but he looks good, phrases intelligently, savors the tasteful secrets of lyric finesse and can rise with ease to a ringing top C. Someone should stop him, quickly, before he ruins all this with inappropriate excursions into the heavyweight repertory. It is alarming to learn that he has already ventured Manrico in “Il Trovatore.”

Giorgio Germont was to have been sung at the opening performance by Thomas Allen. However, he withdrew, pleading indisposition (his strained Count Almaviva in Salzburg last month would support the plea), and the assignment fell to his scheduled alternate, Marcel Vanaud. He exuded proper dignity as the stuffy paterfamilias and sounded reasonably imposing, some woolly tone and passing pitch problems notwithstanding.

The supporting cast included Stephanie Vlahos as a suavely sleazy Flora, John Atkins as a dapper Marquis d’Obigny, Daniel Ebbers as a nervous Gastone, Richard Bernstein as an immature Douphol, Marvellee Cariaga as a sympathetic Annina and Raymond McLeod as a wimpy Dr. Grenvil. Mallory Walker, a big-league tenor who has sung Britten’s Capt. Vere at the Met, was not too proud to accept the two sentences allotted Violetta’s servant, Giuseppe.

Randall Behr, the overexposed all-purpose resident conductor of the Music Center Opera, kept things moving at a brisk, rather inflexible pace. He observed the grand line, deserved credit for restoring at least one verse of both Germonts’ cabalettas, but seemed better at leading than at following.

The dressy, somewhat unruly first-nighters loved almost everything. Almost ? They did muster a small chorus of boos when the director ventured a curtain call.

Critics, critics everywhere.