Glyndebourne, Sussex
Tom Cairns’s naturalistic production of Verdi’s tragedy is revived for the autumn season with Elisa Verzier’s Violetta and Christian Federici’s Germont standouts

Glyndebourne’s autumn season – no longer a touring one, following Arts Council England cuts – opens with a revival by Laura Attridge of Tom Cairns’s 2014 production of La Traviata, a beautiful piece of theatre that serves Verdi’s tragedy uncommonly well. Mindful that the work itself was groundbreaking in its realism, Cairns mostly strives for theatrical naturalism, and the avoidance of grand histrionic gestures that smack of anything conventionally operatic. There’s little to distract from social observation and psychological insight.

Hildegard Bechtler’s designs give us a series of sparsely furnished rooms, minimalist yet smart. Costumes – jackets, ties and tuxes for the men, pencil skirts for the women – suggest the early 1960s. The erotic divertissement at Flora’s soiree feels better integrated than when I last saw it, and indeed the subsequent scene, in which Matteo Desole’s Alfredo publicly humiliates Elisa Verzier’s Violetta, generates extraordinary tension without once seeming melodramatic. The peculiarly symbolist ending, however, when sets and lighting gradually become abstract as Violetta’s life draws to its close, still strikes an awkwardly jarring note.