The Canadian Opera Company’s unmissable La Traviata features a world-class Violetta

REVIEW The Canadian Opera Company’s unmissable La Traviata features a world-class Violetta AISLING MURPHY PUBLISHED 1 HOUR AGO Open this photo in gallery: Kathryn Lewek and Long Long in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of La Traviata. MICHAEL COOPER/SUPPLIED COMMENTS SHARE SAVE FOR LATER Listen to this article Learn more about audio Log in or create a free account to listen to this article. Title: La Traviata Written by: Giuseppe Verdi Conductor: Paolo Carignani Director: Arin Arbus Company: Canadian Opera Company, co-produced with Houston Grand Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago Venue: Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts City: Toronto Year: Runs until Oct. 17 Critic’s Pick Audiences love a gilded cage. Succession’s Kendall Roy, the strung-out heir to an all-powerful media company, makes contemptible choices; he’s also among TV’s most pitiable characters. The Great Gatsby’s Daisy Buchanan, glossed with money, wants for nothing; and yet, by the novel’s shattering denouement, she wants for everything. Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, adapted from Alexandre Dumas fils’s La Dame aux Camélias and staged by director Arin Arbus with a profound sensitivity toward the suffering at the opera’s core, explores this idea at length. Courtesan Violetta (American coloratura soprano Kathryn Lewek) lives a life of opulent parties, in which each meal concludes in a symphony of cakes and croquembouches. Even her fellow guests look like pastries, dressed in layered gowns and towering headpieces as they chatter and groove. Life is sweet at the fringes of 19th-century France’s aristocracy, we can surmise. Small problem, however: Violetta is dying of consumption. Open this photo in gallery: Lewek and Emma Pennell in La Traviata. MICHAEL COOPER/SUPPLIED La Traviata hits all the emotional beats you’d want from a melodrama of its musical scope. When Alfredo (Long Long), a visitor from the French countryside, convinces her to abandon her world of urban abundance to live with him, there’s a moment of hope – perhaps she’ll survive her disease, and craft a more meaningful future for herself away from Paris. But Violetta can’t outrun her social standing as a courtesan. When Alfredo’s father (Russell Braun) catches wind of the relationship, he orders her to leave his son, demanding she must not tell him why. Soon enough, she’s back on the scene in Paris, with friend Flora (Ariana Maubach) and maid Annina (Emma Pennell) by her side as she schmoozes. When Violetta…