HURN Court Opera was founded in 2017 by Lynton Atkinson, with the mission of giving emerging singers a chance of professional performances, and bringing high class opera to audiences across the region, not only at affordable prices but with the added bonus of seeing young stars in the making.

And that is certainly true with the two brilliant lead soloists in this year’s tour of La Traviata, the eighth fully-staged production, performed to sell-out audiences at Christchurch, Blandford and Winchester. Verdi’s heart-rending opera is adapted from Alexandre Dumas’s La Dame aux Camelias, a semi-autobiographical novel, written when the author was only 23, and based on his own brief love affair with a courtesan.

This production, directed by Joy Robinson, is set in the 1930s, moving the story on about a century, but to a similar period of glitter and glamour, a veneer above massive social change and uncertainty. The designs, by Michael Hart, were clean, simple and elegant.

You have to believe that the dazzling Violetta, star of the Parisian salons, has never been in love, and doesn’t imagine she ever will be – until she meets the passionate young Alfredo, sung with immense power and conviction by Sam Britner (it is very hard to believe this glorious soaring tenor is only 21 years old).

Caroline Taylor’s Violetta is appropriately glamorous and glittering, surrounded by the wealthy nobility of Paris, headed by her current lover the Baron. Her parties are legendary, and she swans through them like an Egyptian queen – but in this sensitively directed production, we know from the first notes that this gorgeous creature is dying.

So when she falls in love, she falls very hard – and we are with her, every note of the journey.

Taylor has a voice that can hit the highest notes with strength and beauty, yet bring a tear to the eye with its broken softness, as she does in the cruel and tragic Act Two scene with Alfredo’s father (a dignified but ultimately guilt-stricken Philip Kalmanovitch) and the final act, in which her death is one of the most convincing I have seen in many Traviatas.

There is a real chemistry between this Violetta and Alfredo, which makes the humiliation of the ball at Flora’s house even more shocking. You are (not altogether unfairly) angry at Alfredo for being weak and ready to believe Violetta never loved him and has left him to return to the Baron, until you witness the tormented despair that makes him tear up his winnings at the gambling table and throw them all over the prostrate figure of his mistress. Too often this scene is quite cold, with Alfredo just brutally tossing the money towards Violetta. In this production you see the utter misery that has brought a young man to the brink of madness.

While these two are the undoubted stars of Hurn Court Opera’s production, the director has ensured that even the most minor characters are acting, taking part in the unfolding drama, with the chorus of nobles and courtesans looking on with that slightly-embarrassed but nosy interest that characterises a crowd.

Phoebe Rayner gives real character and style to Flora, Welsh soprano Erin Fflur is a really involved and caring Annina, Massimo Modino is a flashy and temperamental Barone Douphol (I particularly admired the way he kept flexing his fingers during Alfredo’s onslaught on Violetta), Aimee Williams told a compelling story as the gypsy dancer and Dominic Felts brought real poignancy and care to Dottore Grenvil, who cannot bring himself to tell Violetta how close she is to death.

The orchestra, under the baton of company founder and artistic director Lynton Atkinson, handled Verdi’s familiar but demanding score with verve and energy.

FAC

Photographs by Alexander Kabanov