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La Traviata at Arts Centre Melbourne runs from 4th – 28th May 2022 with Opera Australia. The world’s most-performed opera, composed by Giuseppe Verdi, is excitedly anticipated in the OA Autumn season. We talk to two of the production’s stars, Mezzo Soprano Celeste Haworth, and Baritone Andrew Moran ahead of opening night.
Raise your glass, bat your lashes, it’s Paris in the salons and you’re the life of this party. He’s staring at you, he’s singing for you… Are you tempted?
Violetta wears velvet and lace and drinks only the finest champagne from crystal glasses. Her parties are legendary, her company desired. She’s free and freespirited, living outside society’s bounds, and for the courtesan, it seems like the party will never end. Could a little love really change everything?
La Traviata is so popular because it puts a life we can only dream of on stage, with its risqué glamour, joys and sorrows.
Verdi’s music sings of freedom with flying melodies, makes merry with rousing drinking songs and leaves us with passionate duets between breaking hearts.
This production by Elijah Moshinsky is one of our most successful, featuring lush party scenes in Paris and beautiful autumn afternoons in the countryside.
Lavish sets and exquisite costumes combined with Verdi’s famous score offer the perfect way to experience opera for the first time, or the chance to revisit a favourite with an exciting new cast.
Mezzo Soprano Celeste Haworth has performed many roles as a principal artist in Europe, Australia and Asia and has been a regular principal artist with Opera Australia, the State Theatre of Wiesbaden, and the annual Wien Modern Festival in Vienna. Currently based in Sydney as an artist with Opera Australia, Celeste has been singing at the Sydney Opera House in the Opera Australia’s Great Opera Hits Concert Series since 2019. Celeste has four degrees, three from the Sydney Conservatorium, including a Post Grad Diploma of Music (Opera), and her Masters of Opera from the Vienna Conservatorium (Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien). Her Master’s Thesis “Rossini Heroines” was published and is available on amazon.com.
It has been a wonderful rehearsal time, as the artistic team, cast and crew are an incredible lineup. I have been getting used to the large skirt and bustle that Flora wears in this production – she sashays around the stage.
The costumes and set are so sumptuous, you feel as though you are instantly transported into a stunning period drama movie – it’s that detailed and exquisitely crafted.
The difference in the two productions is enormous! Opera Australia’s Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour was a massive spectacle, and a true privilege to be a part of something on that scale. Outdoors, floating on Sydney Harbour with the Harbour Bridge and the Opera house glittering behind you as a backdrop, I had to pinch myself several times: the entire surroundings become part of the atmosphere of the opera, an extraordinary feeling for the audience and everyone on stage.
More specifically, I had several talented dancers carry me on stage for one of my entrances as Flora – it was lots of fun! Flora had a glittery whip, and had to be larger than life, particularly for that massive stage. We even had fireworks exploding above our heads!
In our current Opera Australia production for Sydney and Melbourne, it is far more intimate and beautifully so: sumptuous and luxurious, a perfectly framed picture for the audience in every scene of late 19th century life, presented so artistically in this world of courtesans and Parisian glamour.
It is actually one of the most gorgeous productions I have ever worked on.
Whilst Flora doesn’t have her dancers and whip in this production, the emotional intent is still the same: a party girl, with a friendly but real rivalry with the best courtesan in Paris, Violetta. It’s so much more interesting for me to bring out this colour in their relationship, as it creates dramatically more dimension.
I consider it a great honour to sing with the OA chorus, but the fact that I get to also sing roles as well makes it a dream!
There is a reason so many international star conductors come to Australia and remark that this chorus is one of the best in the world.
We have a lot of operatic talent in Australia, and with only one full-time national opera company the best singers are available, and the standard for musicality and achievement is incredibly high. The recent Covid times make us even more grateful to be working and performing full-time, and with my additional role preparation on top it makes me also grateful for coffee!
In addition to this, Opera Australia has been very supportive as I transition into a dramatic mezzo fach, and has given me time and opportunity to sing constantly, as I develop this. The numerous hours of daily singing, performing and rehearsing multiple shows has helped that transition and stamina required for the dramatic mezzo fach.
Actually, I am always performing and rehearsing! I did teach during the pandemic lockdowns, but my performance schedule no longer allows this. We have hit the ground running as soon as we reopened, and to the most enthusiastic audiences.
If there is any time in between my engagements with Opera Australia, I can sometimes accept concert work. So in the coming months I look forward to being the mezzo soloist for Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Willoughby Symphony in July and to a concert of arias in Melbourne for MTO’s German Australia Opera Grant, who generously sponsored me after winning the grant, during my years as a principal artist at Hessiches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, in Germany.
Baritone Andrew Moran is a Senior Principal Artist with Opera Australia, having performed over 30 roles with the company. He is best remembered for his portrayals of Marcello (La Bohème), Sharpless (Madama Butterfly), Ping (Turandot), and Papageno (Die Zauberflöte), for which he has twice been nominated for a Green Room Award. As well as Andrew’s experience as a recitalist (Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Poulenc’s Le bal masque) he is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the Italian Opera Award, the Phoebe Patrick Award, and the Glyndebourne Festival Prize. Born in Melbourne, Andrew holds a Bachelor of Music from Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and a Graduate Diploma in Music from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Rehearsals are progressing brilliantly. Stacey Alleaume is a beautiful Violetta, as we know from seeing and hearing her shine in La Traviata on Sydney Harbour last year. There’s a real buzz in the room, as we re-visit characters that have been inhabited by wonderful Australian artists over the 28 years Opera Australia has been producing this show.
La Traviata is timeless, but revival director Con Costi is bringing new energy and vitality to every scene.
Whilst the productions are different in both scale and period, the grist of the story has the same ability to break the heart of any audience member (we hope). In both versions, every performer is creating a world for this extraordinary romance against all odds to take place.
We’ve seen the sexism and hypocrisy of people’s behaviour towards sex workers for centuries, and unfortunately that behaviour shows no sign of disappearing any time soon.
Setting a tale like La Traviata in different time periods is an obvious way of showing this, and opera companies have an obligation to remind audiences that just because people are no longer attending Paris salons and wearing corsets, the tendencies of human behaviour haven’t changed much over the years.
The unifying factor between different productions of a great piece such as Trav is, however, Verdi’s score. No great production could tell this story without it, so we must always remain faithful to it. That always has to guide one’s interpretation of a role.
Unfortunately, theatre and opera companies worldwide seem to regard a ready stable of versatile and experienced performers as an anachronistic indulgence that can’t be maintained alongside their other necessary full-time employees, and have steadily dismantled their ensembles over the last few decades.
Thankfully Opera Australia haven’t gone down this path, and I am a beneficiary of this policy. I’ve long seen my job as a privilege and an honour, as I get to be part of this ongoing company that has been telling amazing stories across Australia for over 60 years.
To create and inhabit roles that have been written by composers spanning over 400 years is a pretty special responsibility, and it’s an excellent way to make a living!
I patrol regularly with the Dee Why Surf Life Saving Club, I could be described as a competent family cook, and my finest attribute in the garden is that I occasionally learn from my mistakes.
La Traviata at Arts Centre Melbourne (4 – 28 May 2022)
La Traviata at Sydney Opera House (5 July – 4 November 2022)
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Michelle is a musician and composer from the UK. She has performed across the UK and Europe and is passionate about arts education and opportunities for women and girls.
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