Music Reviews : Walter MacNeil in Final ‘Traviata’

A new Alfredo, in the person of Walter MacNeil, joined the cast Wednesday for Music Center Opera’s final performance of “La Traviata” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

But it wasn’t all fun and camellias for the son of the veteran Met baritone, Cornell MacNeil.

One reason fell to circumstance--filling in rather than being part of the rehearsals in which a character develops--and the other, a temperamental reticence on the singer’s part.

When this Alfredo leaves Violetta after their first, delirious love vows he exits idly, as though to a water fountain. And when he sings “De’ miei bollenti spiriti,” he sits comfortably on a bench, hardly suggesting the “boiling spirits” Verdi may have had in mind.

Nor did he make much of the feverishly intimate reunion with the consumptive courtesan the way his predecessor had, hovering over her every deathly move and crushing her to him as she clutched a billowy wedding gown.

For all that, MacNeil cut a reasonably romantic figure onstage and his sturdy tenor, despite some seeming indisposition, had a nicely Italianate ring, robust low tones and enough weight for the impassioned denunciation in the Gambling Scene. Anger, as here, and filial contempt, as with Germont, apparently came easier to him than tenderness.