La Traviata
Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay

IT IS five years since the Welsh National Opera has performed Verdi’s La Traviata and it has dusted down the Italian maestro’s perennial favourite but with an ending that fails to bring the usual tears.

Stacey Alleaume is a feisty Violetta and has a ravishing voice to go with her acting skills. But it is David Junghoon Kim who is an uncertain Alfredo, despite his fabulous singing.

Both Alleaume and Kim will no doubt have stellar careers in the opera world, but in an opera where the two lead characters fall madly in love they both fail to convey that chemistry.

Violetta is a courtesan who is suffering from consumption and has been ill, which is where Alfredo comes into the plot. He has seen her and fallen in love and visits the house she is in every day for a year.

He appears at a louche party where he persuades her that he loves her and together they leave Paris for a more sedate lifestyle in the country.

Verdi’s duets are sublime and as a recitation, these two singers are world-class.

But this is opera where a good standard of acting is required.

When Alfredo’s father (sung by a nervy-looking Mark Doss) visits Violetta in his son’s absence he persuades her to break off the relationship because of the harm the scandal is causing his family.

As this is the mid-19th century doubtless setting up home with a prostitute would be regarded as scandalous by polite society.

But Alfredo’s rage at what he sees as Violetta’s betrayal comes across as a fit of adolescent pique by Kim. Especially in the party scene where he wins a lot of money at cards and flings the money at Violetta to repay what he regards as his debt to her for paying all their bills.

But it is the finale where the singers are meant to wring every ounce of emotion from the audience as the doomed lovers meet for one last time on Violetta’s deathbed.

The wooden father and son are meant to be both in deep remorse for how they have treated Violetta and her pending death and yet that is not how it appears on stage. Hence the lack of emotional intensity and tears.

But this work of genius by Verdi is a perennial classic which is why it is still performed 170 years after the first production in Venice.

It is still worth going to see and bask in the gorgeous music and the beautiful arias which convey love and grief. Just do not expect to see top-drawer acting.

Plays in England and Wales until November 25. Box office: (029 )2063-5000, wno.org.uk