Two groups collaborate on 'Traviata'

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Cleveland Plain Dealer
Donald Rosenberg

Plain Dealer Music Critic

"La Traviata" fever appears to have hit Cleveland.

Not long after Opera Cleveland announced a production of Verdi's immortal opera about the consumptive courtesan with a heart of gold for next summer at the Cleveland Play House, word arrived that the Cleveland Institute of Opera Theater would present Act I of "Traviata" in November, along with scenes from other beloved works.

But the first local "Traviata" out of the starting gate this season comes from the intimate Opera Circle, in collaboration with the Cleveland Women's Orchestra. They'll give performances Friday at the Alliance of Poles Auditorium and Sunday at Bohemian National Hall, both in Slavic Village.

Teaming Opera Circle with the Women's Orchestra was the brainstorm of Robert Cronquist, who has been music director of the orchestra for 16 years. Cronquist is also music director of the Lakeside Festival Orchestra, which featured soprano Dorota Sobieska, co-director of Opera Circle, in a program of Viennese music several years ago.

Their talks led to a production of "Traviata" in August with the Lakeside orchestra. Virtually the same cast will take part in this weekend's performances, which will have sets Cronquist used in previous productions. And the conductor himself is staging the work, though he says the task isn't too complicated.

"I did a lot of blocking and went over a lot of the motions with them," Cronquist said. "They're intelligent artists. They know how to do the roles. The Met used to do this all the time. We get the people into position, and they, of course, add their own little bits to it."

In addition to her job as impresario, Sobieska usually stages and sings in Opera Circle productions. With "Traviata," she's happy to let Cronquist direct and merely -- if that's the word -- sing the role of Violetta, the "strayed one" of the title.

The part is one of the most difficult in the operatic repertoire, famous for requiring three different vocal types for each act. In Act I, Violetta negotiates coloratura flourishes. Later, she becomes more lyrical and dramatic.

The Lakeside production was the Polish-born Sobieska's first experience in this taxing role. She had wanted to sing Violetta since her student days in Warsaw. But because Opera Circle devotes itself to small productions with reduced orchestras, Sobieska and her co-director and husband, Jacek Sobieski, put off "Traviata" until the circumstances were right.

"We were thinking of doing Traviata,' but to do it full-scale, you need a full orchestra, not a reduction," said Sobieska, who recently returned from Germany, where she sang two performances as the Queen of the Night in Mozart's "The Magic Flute."

Cronquist is using about 50 members of the Women's Orchestra -- the only extant ensemble of its kind in the United States -- for "Traviata." The orchestra, which played its first concert in November 1936 at Severance Hall, is a service ensemble that performs at senior venues, elsewhere around Cleveland and gives an annual Severance concert (the next is Sunday, May 6).

"Traviata" is a historic event for the orchestra.

"This is the first time I've done this with the women," Cronquist said. "We started last year in the pit doing a ballet production with Ohio Dance Theatre. We'll do a couple more this year. I thought it would be nice to add [opera] to their repertoire. It's two of our 11 concerts this year. We're pretty much at our maximum."

Cronquist is no stranger to opera. During his 22 years as music director of the Mansfield Symphony, he led annual productions featuring Metropolitan Opera stars, such as mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom, baritones Robert Merrill and Frank Guarrera and bass Jerome Hines. He's also conducted opera -- including the middle-period Verdi triumvirate of "Traviata," "Rigoletto" and "Il Trovatore" -- at Lakeside.

Sobieska believes "Traviata" to be "the most Bellinian of all Verdi operas," she said, referring to the bel-canto opera composer Vicenzo Bellini. "It is the most deeply personal, and through that, universal in time and place. Even the overture has no pomposity, but rather a reminiscence -- a reflection of that personal face' everybody carries veiled, hidden to the public."

Opera Circle often imports singers for its productions, but this week's "Traviata" cast is entirely local. Singing alongside Sobieska will be Kent State University faculty member Timothy Culver as Alfredo and Ray Liddle as Germont. The opera's secondary roles will be taken by Amy Scheetz-Tatta, Nicole Boeke, Robert Davis, Jose Gotera, Peter Bush and Max Pivic.

"It's not that I'm against exchanges," said Sobieska. "We bring in people all the time. But there has to be a certain base that is our own thing, or we don't exist. What are we, a presenting organization?

"We have to have something that's distinctly ours. Cleveland is great."

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To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: drosenberg@plaind.com, 216-999-4269