<<  -- 6 --  Roderic Dunnett    BEAUTIFULLY TOGETHER

Petru Racovita's dark-eyed, pasty-faced Germont senior made an impact from his first entry. His richly celebrated baritone aria, 'Di Provenza il mar, il suol' ('who has erased the land and sea of Provence from your heart? was doubly effective for being laced with a Slavic feel, recalling Bohus's great nationalistic aria in Dvorák's Jacobin or the Bohemian protector Vok Vitkovic's in Smetana's The Devil's Wall.

Skibinskiy followed Violetta's long lament with almost intuitive insight, and the gradual pounding home of the fateful theme grew more and more powerful. The problem with this scene is arguably that director Zuenko needs to be more specific with his actors : he places them intelligently enough, but leaves, so it seems, too much of the intermittent invention to them. Ellen Kent, however -- herself a dancer by training, usually does the dance elements well : Irina Bolshaková and Artem Lomovytsky were the successful Gypsy duo here; the chorus men's matador costumes, alas, were a pantomimesque disaster.

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