I can’t see the point of Glyndebourne’s La traviata

One of the highlights of last year’s Glyndebourne Festival was the revival of Richard Jones’s Falstaff, spruced up and invigorated by Mark Elder’s conducting of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a beautifully balanced cast. Elder is also in charge again for the festival’s third new production of this year, Tom Cairns’s La traviata, although with the London Philharmonic this time. His conducting is extremely fine once more, managing to be lucid and intelligent, thrillingly dramatic and lovingly shaped. The playing of the LPO is of supremely high quality throughout, while the cast features a genuinely exciting leading couple. Venera Gimadieva and Michael Fabiano, as Violetta and Alfredo, both sing with an almost languid, big-voiced ease that’s a pleasure to witness. Her sound is creamy and penetrating, with Act I’s fireworks cleverly and convincingly negotiated; his is virile and exciting, although perhaps a little unstintingly so at times.