The most important thing to say about next week's two Taipei performances of Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata is that you are unlikely to hear as fine a soprano in this role, or any other, for a considerable time to come, certainly in Taiwan.
The young Hungarian singer Eszter Sumegi will, without any doubt whatsoever, be head and shoulders above all the other cast members. Moreover, she's a singer who is rapidly ascending the international operatic ladder. A recent Tosca was greeted with unanimous acclaim, and she will repeat the role in November at the Vienna State Opera opposite the great Renato Bruson as Scarpia. But, just to show her variety, in October she will sing the First Walkyrie in Die Walkure in Paris, with Placido Domingo as Siegmund, in a Ring production directed by Robert Wilson.
This is her first visit to Asia, and for her appearance in Taipei we have to thank fellow-Hungarian Andras Ligeti, recently appointed as director of the Taipei Symphony Orchestra (TSO), the organization responsible for this event. She is undoubtedly the main reason for attending the performances -- two only -- at the Metropolitan Hall next weekend.
At a rehearsal at the TSO's Bade Road premises on Tuesday night Sumegi lay on her back on the floor with her arms and legs in the air. "You want me to sing like this?" she said. "No problem! I have the voice and I can sing in any position you choose." Director Hung Hung looked on amused, before explaining that wasn't quite what he had in mind.
She remained a bundle of energy throughout the evening, singing full-throatedly throughout, holding nothing back, and at the same time laughing, gesturing, dancing to the music and exchanging remarks with the conductor in Hungarian. She is certain to be an astonishing Violetta, and the thought that you only have to travel a few streets' distance to hear and see her boggles the mind. When I spoke to her she complained about the hot and humid weather.
The local food, too, came in for some sharp words. "We went to this restaurant, and do you know what there was to eat? It was dog. I couldn't believe it. Well, maybe they were joking, but I have stuck with McDonald's ever since." I pointed out there were at least two excellent Italian restaurants very close by. "Ah yes," she said, "I love Italian food."
Back in 1992 Sumegi won the Pavarotti Competition in Philadelphia, and the prize, she said, was a performance alongside the famous Italian tenor. It was of Gaetano Donizetti's little-known opera La Favorita, she added, grimacing. Anyway, she said, she won it, and that was the main thing.
If you've never attended an opera performance before, La Traviata would be an excellent one to start with. Verdi thought it was his best, or at least it is the one that has received the most deserved acclaim since its premiere in 1853.
Violetta, a courtesan (or European-style geisha), is in love with Alfredo, off-spring of a famous family. Alfredo's father, Germont intervenes and persuades her to give his son up, in the interests of respectability and an advantageous marriage. She very reluctantly agrees, but meets Alfredo again at a party. Before long he is back by her side, but it's too late as she's dying of tuberculosis.
Verdi deliberately set the opera in the Paris of his own day, an unusual proceeding at the time. For next week's production Taiwan theater-director, poet and film-maker Hung Hung is setting it in an indeterminate period, but with strong references to modern Taipei, especially in the party that constitutes the third act.
"Alexandre Dumas (fils) told the story from Alfredo's point of view in his original stage play," he told me. "Verdi and his librettist put the emphasis on Violetta, giving her all the most spectacular music, but I want to revert to Dumas's perspective. During the Prelude, for instance, we will project images of a range of movie stars, with Violetta among them. Alfredo will be seen looking at these, so that when the curtain goes up on Act One he actually meets the woman who has already become his hero.
"I see the opera as the story of Alfredo's coming of age. The causes of the tragedy are his father's ultra-traditional values. During the opera Alfredo learns to defy him, but of course by then it's too late."
Act One (another party) will be staged more or less as usual, Hung Hung said. Act Two, set in Violetta's house, will take place in a conservatory full of plants. Act Three, the second party, will feature modern-style dancers and muscle-men rather than the gypsies and matadors of the text, while Act Four will be set in a hospital ward.
"I really want the audience to smell that hospital," Hung Hung said. "In the original it's Violetta's bedroom, but I want you to see her dying among other sick people. There'll be six beds on stage, with members of the chorus in the other five. The theme is not only the death of someone who is by now a poor woman -- it's the death and suffering of all of us."
This production is unusual in that the soloists singing Alfredo and Germont, Wang Feng and Yang Xiao-yung respectively, have both been brought in from Shanghai. Yang told me on Tuesday that he'd arrived at the rehearsal straight from the airport. The last time he was in Taipei, he said, was 10 years ago.
"In my heart I am very angry with Alfredo," said Eszter Sumegi, as Hung Hung was trying to tell her how he wanted her to react at a particular juncture. "I have known too many men like that in my life."
Meanwhile someone was laying yellow tape on the floor to indicate the dimensions of the Metropolitan Hall's stage, and the singers, accompanied by a pianist and with Andras Ligeti conducting, went though the crucial Act Two scene between Germont and Violetta.
"Germont is a gentleman, but very strong inside," said Hung Hung, going on to talk to Sumegi about "emotional transfer." One of the minor characters came on stage with a bottle -- was she going to be shown as drunk? Surely not. But Violetta will have a revolver and at least contemplate suicide, so anything might happen.
Taipei opera productions can at worst be a mis-match between European passion (and emotional openness) and a Taiwanese obsession with the cute and the contemporary. Hung Hung's essential seriousness, together with the musical professionalism of both the TSO and Andras Ligeti (as demonstrated by their performance together of Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony at the Zhongshan Hall last November), are likely to ensure this doesn't happen next weekend.
The imbalance to worry about will be between Eszter Sumegi and the other soloists. But the newly-renovated Metropo-litan Hall is a pleasantly medium-sized venue, and the singers will not be forced to over-stretch themselves unnaturally. Sumegi will certainly fill every corner of it with her glorious voice, and that will be more than enough for many listeners.
Performance notes:
"La Traviata" plays at the Taipei Metropolitan Hall (
Tickets are from NT$400 to NT$1,200.
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