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Elizabeth Futral southern belle rings out the summer season in SFO's "La Traviata"
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Elizabeth Futral southern belle kills them softly as she closes "La Traviata" at SFO
So Elizabeth Futral didn’t kick her party shoes off as high as Anna Netrebko’s chandelier teaser in "La Traviata", as the summer season closed at SFO on Sunday afternoon. Futral though played it soft and sultry as a southern belle. Having lived in New Orleans I will say that’s how it’s done. If one thought the soft approach seemed contrived at times but effective, that’s how southern women are, it’s not just an actor’s style. Moreover Southern women can nice you to death. For example you get a slice of pineapple as a welcome when you visit the plantation. If you get the whole pineapple at your door, it’s time to go.
Here's Elizabeth in a more traditional staging with Los Angeles, and it doesn't do her justice compared to her lovely performance at SFO where she closed the summer season.
Carter Krizman my date thought Futral didn’t have a big enough voice but I thought she looked petite and pretty and young.
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So to match the lighter hearted production there seemed to be an unintended laugh when the doctor in Act III tells her Violetta on her death bed to think positive, then says aside to the maid, she’s only got a couple of hours to live. In contrast the audience took it seriously with Netrebko, who played it more deep and brooding rather than farcical. Speaking of which. More from Carter to come.
Meanwhile critic Jason Serinus commented on the power of Elizabeth’s voice, comparing her not to Netrebko but to another coloratura, the comedic ballerina Natalie Dessay. However I have to disagree with Serinus’ evaluation of Futral being the better sufferer though, having described Netrebko’s most beautiful moment on opening night as when she dropped to the floor as the angels came to spirit her soul to Heaven not Hell. These are completely different women and deserve to be viewed on their own terms, that’s why there is a different woman cast, it’s not an attempt to make them conform to one ideal Violetta. Granted one may have a personal preference.
Granted even Josh Kosman liked Futral and thought she looked the part (what does that mean?) by saying Futral is the right size . . . but Josh concentrated entirely on La Traviata being the final performance of maestro Runnicles, basically one lining Futral’s performance. The right size for what? Just what is the right size for a sixteen year old courtesan? At least that’s the age of the real demimondine who died of tuberculosis at 23, according to Kip Kranna.
Serinus says: Futral first. Her voice is noticeably bigger, albeit less secure above high C than one of today’s other major coloraturas, Natalie Dessay, with whom she shares a gift for total ease, physical freedom, and convincing theatrics. Futral is also a beautiful woman who handles glamour better than Netrebko, and is far more convincing in her transition to tubercular suffering. Her voice may not be the most alluring when at full throttle — neither is Dessay’s, nor Netrebko’s, which, though quite beautiful on top, has grown dismayingly thick and leaden in the middle and lower registers — yet Futral handles it with consummate intelligence.
Contemplations with Carter over salmon and champagne
Carter and I contemplated why the father had to interfere and why wasn’t it the mother who went to Violetta to intervene between the retiring courtesan and their son. We had just seen Act II and walked up a little internal staircase from the orchestra to the second level to have our cold salmon and salad by Patina. A place card reading “Carter” sat on the white linen table cloth near the fresh pink flowers; We had ordered during the first intermission for the second and had just the right amount of time to share the salmon and salad during the second. The service was so nice and polite and we could have had what was left put on ice until after Act III.
We mused. The wives just don’t seem to be around in Verdidom to provide the voice of morality as that would be Verdi. La Traviata, like Rigoletto, opens with a big flashy party full of courtesans or as the director Marta Domingo describes, demimondaines. Fertile ground for indulgence while the cat’s away. Marta is Placido’s wife.
So why not the mother of Alfredo? asked Carter. Perhaps mothers tended daughters, fathers tended sons. But this was a business issue and Giorgio plays it matter of fact like a businessman laying it all out on the table. Carter just kept waiting for him to pay off Violetta but he never does. Instead she wants the paternal love of the man who should be her father in law. She doesn’t have any family, she tells him. She’s dying, she tells him. Yet he doesn’t care, says Carter. Why is he so cold?
It does reveal a practical and sober side to the licentious or scandalous behavior; Violetta seems to be telling us if she had a father and a family she would not be a demimondaine. So she isn’t really disdaining authority like a 1920s flapper or spoiled brat, she’s trying to survive. Giorgio has the same practical tone and that’s where they come to a meeting of the minds, an intellectual understanding if not an emotional accord.
If this had been a woman’s issue where the family was sensitive to the situation yes but I imagine this self respecting traditional father and husband would never let his wife go to confront a courtesan.
Carter and I continued the conversation back in the orchestra, seats P2 and P4. He stretched his long legs into the aisle. I said, the whole bit about Giorgio protecting his daughter’s impending marriage from family scandal seemed to be contrived even if it suits the business-like tone of the confrontation. After all, the father walks into Violetta’s home and declares that his son has declared he would give Violetta his inheritance. This cannot make the father too happy, seeing his family fortune go to a courtesan. This also reveals Alfredo had discussed the matter with his father, a pre-marital step. Somebody has to protect Alfredo from himself.
Germont just seems a bit overprotective. It’s funny how even when courtesans according to Kip Kranna usually find their fortunes with older men, the father never gave a hint of wanting a piece of the action. Germont does seem to play it straight, acting out of a patriarchal and paternal instinct to protect his and his own. I’ve never seen Germont played as a letch. Someday there will be a Traviata satire on Youtube done with Leggos, as has been done to Tosca and Il Trovatore.
To protect his young son from himself too, from making a fool of himself and the family with a woman whose young life has been a party hopping. The father did immasculate the son a bit by the intervention instead of going to the son himself. As Carter said in his Carterian wisdom
Alfredo seems a bit al dente, underdone.
Charles Castronovo sang the young and handsome Alfredo.
Why must parents interfere? Carter persisted. Why must the father be so cold?
I said he is just traditional and out of step with the times, the jazz age being a force to be reckoned with I imagine. He cannot take the humiliation any longer. He has endured three months of discomfort during the time of Violetta’s honeymoon with Alfredo in the countryside where she is keeping him, her financial straights unbeknownst to him. He must have known the money wasn’t coming from his own pockets, where did he think it came from if not her in some way, whether she was selling off her possessions or her favors?
I said Giorgio Germont just couldn’t take the humiliation any longer, and the embrace and accord reached marked the end of that, explaining some of the good feeling on his part as just relief that all would be right with the world. Carter really wanted to know what the little tete a tete at the end of Act II was.
Carter thought Violetta didn’t put up enough of a fight. I thought though her fight came when she embraced Alfredo, beseeching him to love her, love her as she loved him. Gets me every time. She makes you feel her pain.
Closing notes on casting
I liked Elizabeth Futral, the casting of her seemed so appropriate given she grew up in Louisiana although not New Orleans. She would have a native understanding of the jazz age. The military did shut down Storyville for corrupting the sailors. That’s when Louis Armstrong had to move to St. Louis to find work.
Elizabeth, I read, had a religious or gospel upbringing which makes for the same kind of tension as in La Traviata. Her father was a minister. How does one find morality and do the right and kind thing in a value-free society, or one where it’s rude to say no? Probably by staying out of the French Quarter. New Orleans is a rough and sexually driven world, and Elizabeth played Stella in Streetcar Named Desire at SFO. Elizabeth has also sang Baby Doe. That’s the true American legend of a singer in the silver mines who marries a silver baron. They were both married and the revelation scandalizes Washington; the silver baron eventually loses his fortune and Baby Doe dies alone and freezing next to the silver mine 35 years after her husband’s death. Rags to riches to rags.
She also starred recently with Nathan Gunn in A Brief Encounter. Two commuters have an affair as they keep meeting at the train station before going home to their respective spouses. From what I see Elizabeth’s characters are not challenging society, they just want to be happily married. Simply stories about love between two people, so Verdian.
That was the tall dark and handsome Kenneth Kellogg, an Adler Fellow, playing Doctor Grenvil. Perhaps his young and handsome appearance rather than that of an older white and paternal gentleman had something to do with the lighter perception by the audience?
On that note Carter also suggested the French maid’s outfit should have been shorter. That would be first year Adler Fellow Renee Tatum playing Annina.
I told Carter if you get the French maid I get the Egyptian dancer.
Fun to watch the choristers party and pose and vogue . . . I noticed Gere Torkelson still with his ponytail cut off and looking distinguished. Blue eyed Andy Truett looking debonair. Tall Bill Pickersgill looked dashing in his tuxedo. Also the male Egyptian dancer seemed more cocky and show offy cavorting with his harem, more than his predecessor and he kept his balance and then some, he seemed to relish it.
Carter seemed to think so much of the opera was spent with melodramatic rationalization with the characters trying to explain themselves, the weakest act being the smack down between Germont and Violetta. The music though remains so beautiful.
For more info: www.SFOpera.com, www.BerkeleyOpera.org
Piano player Tom McDermott in the Bywater, New Orleans. Photo: Cindy Warner
Photos: San Francisco Opera. Dancers: Cory Weaver; Futral by Kirsten Loken Anstey
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