‘Traviata’ succumbs to overexertion

A case can be made for nepotism in classical music. Sons -- Carlos Kleiber, Peter Serkin -- have artistically outdone famous fathers. Six years ago, eyebrows rose when Long Beach Opera’s founder hired his novice daughter as a director. But those eyebrows quickly dropped when Isabel Milenski turned out to have a vivid stage imagination.

More than once, Marta Domingo has been on the payroll of companies her husband heads, directing for Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera. A former singer as well as the wife of the opera world’s most celebrated tenor and overachiever, she clearly knows the ropes.

And she clearly likes to pull them, as she did at the opening of her new production of “La Traviata” in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Wednesday night. During Verdi’s overture, seductive call girls standing under a lamppost picked up well-dressed gentlemen.

Two highly visible wires lifted the lamppost after a shiny cream-colored antique car had rolled in and dropped off an emphatically bubbly Violetta, her blindingly bright jewels all aglitter in unsubtle light. The car rolled out through the ballroom, which looked suspiciously like the room in which we sat, with a Pavilion-like chandelier and a swath of curtain.

As general director of Los Angeles Opera, Placido Domingo has been remarkably open to sophisticated theatrical experiment, making the company a home away from home for the visionary likes of Robert Wilson and Achim Freyer. As she was mounting “Traviata,” Marta Domingo must have regularly bumped into Julie Taymor backstage.

But this director appears to have a different taste in theater from the adventurous variety her husband has lately championed. In 1999, L.A. Opera mounted her previous “Traviata,” replete with vulgar sets by Giovanni Agostinucci. At the time, she asked in a program note that we please be allowed to leave Violetta in her time and place, Paris in the 19th century. And she staged the opera as one preposterously overblown death scene for Carol Vaness.

Much has changed in this production. Domingo now updates the action to the 1920s. As a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed flapper Violetta, Elizabeth Futral seems to die not from consumption but from overexertion. And this time, Domingo serves as her own interior decorator, giving us a country garden of paisley trees and later a flowery deathbed for Violetta surmounted by a paisley moon, twinkling stars and falling snow.

At Flora’s party, a combo pretends to play le jazz hot while long-legged gypsies in gold spangles and gold helmets dance what looks like an Egyptian Charleston (Kitty McNamee was the choreographer). The walls are spider webs.

In these surroundings, a vocally accomplished cast asked to gaudily telegraph emotions appeared ill at ease. Futral’s Violetta has become familiar from a production at Opera Pacific and a concert performance at the Hollywood Bowl. She is a vibrant, exciting soprano, but without careful direction her all-American exuberance gets in the way of creating a character. Could it be that she was trying to bring an authentic ‘20s silent-film acting style into the mix?

Joseph Calleja, a young singer from Malta with a prestigious record contract, is a fresh lyric tenor, but there was too little likable about his shifty-eyed, leering Alfredo. Dwayne Croft as Germont, Alfredo’s father, who breaks up his son’s socially unacceptable romance, is an elegant, understated baritone. But he and Calleja were still concerned with Domingo’s busy blocking on Wednesday.

Only Suzanna Guzman as Flora, Violetta’s fellow “hostess” -- flashy but with just the right touch of tongue in cheek -- demonstrated that perhaps, under ideal circumstances, the production could amuse a bit more. John Fiore’s forthright conducting moved things along, though not enough to make the evening short, since there are two intermissions. The chorus was not at its best.

My guess is that after a few more run-throughs, this will settle into a slightly more convincing “Traviata.” But will there ever be a wet eye in the house? I doubt there was one Wednesday, despite the standing ovation.

Much is expected from this production. It will open next season, spectacularly cast with Renee Fleming, Rolando Villazon and Renato Bruson. James Conlon, the company’s new music director, will be in the Chandler pit for the first time. The opera world will be watching. And that is cause for concern.

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‘La Traviata’

Where: Los Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Tuesday, Friday and June 21; 2 p.m. June 18 and 24

Price: $30 to $205

Contact: (213) 972-8001 or www.laopera.com