This was not the first time I’ve observed that opera can hurtle the viewer’s emotions into meltdown quicker than eighteen vodkas, but it was my first Traviata, and it was truly awesome. Thank God for waterproof mascara. And opera can make you weep like a small abandoned child even though your mind is thoroughly not accepting of the dramatic situation you’re watching, so that even as you’re thinking ‘Why does she have to leave him?  If she’s dying soon, why don’t they just wait for her to die?’ your eyes are producing so many tears that some of them are escaping down your nose and threatening to drip onto your new dress. It wasn’t just me either – there was surreptitious sniffing and coughing all around me in the theatre. 

This is partly due to the terrible power of the story in combination with Verdi’s heart-wrenching music, and partly the button-pushing of Piave’s libretto, but final credit must go to Maria Tsonina, the stunning blonde goddess who played dying courtesan Violetta with wonderful grace and beauty and touching vulnerability. Her voice is fine and sweet but with depth and body, like a very good Jurançon; it’s also flexible and supple and expressive and she is an awesome actress as well as a divinely gifted soprano, such that you can’t take your eyes off her and she carries the whole production along on her stupendous operatic superpowers. A total star in other words. 

The mezzo-soprano Viktoria Zhytkova who played Violetta’s naughty friend Flora was also possessed of a first-rate astounding voice. The others, not quite in the same class – Ruslan Zinevych as Alfredo sang a valiant but not always entirely accurate tenor, though the tone was beautiful, and baritone Vladimir Dragos as Germont père had a peculiar harshness that put you in mind of cigarettes and whisky and wild wild women, though we agreed that it enhanced his characterization of M. Germont as a bluff northern mill-owning type. 

Sets and costumes were exquisite and traditional; the orchestra much appreciated. When you consider how many people and how much effort it takes to produce an opera it is astonishing that tickets can be offered for as little at £40. I understand that last night was its only performance in Oxford but you can of course catch it elsewhere as the company is permanently on tour, and I urge you to do so.