La Traviata.
Jan. 31st, 2011 14:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyGiuseppe Verdi, La Traviata.
As I've said before, I'm not innately a passionate devotee of most of the opera canon, but that doesn't mean I didn't leap at going to see the new (to the Met) production of this opera at the Met in New York when I was there in January. $24.50 rush tickets for the standing stalls in the back, hooray!
The opera concerns a Parisian courtesan who is dying of tuberculosis and the son of a wealthy bourgeois who loves her, and the conflict between true emotion and bourgeois morality that their love invokes. Quite frankly, all of this is interesting to me because it's based on the play La dame aux Camélias by Dumas fils, which was based on the novel he wrote about his experiences with the real-life courtesan Marie Duplessis, whose death broke his heart and who is now immortalized, in the second degree, in this opera. The less said about the bourgeois morality of everyone but Violetta, the better.
What really enthralled me here, though, was the production, which is new and contemporary and done by Willy Decker and mostly stunning and beautiful (though I questioned the choice to have the props and the singers wearing the same floral chintz pattern in the second act, but I get that it is Symbolic), and Maria Poplavskaya, who sings Violetta and is--in some ways I would call Violetta the forerunner of Emilia in The Makropulos Case--thoroughly brilliant in the role. Violetta is a compelling character with great strength of will who makes her own choices, constrained though they are, and she's hugely sympathetic. I also liked the obvious but effective choice of having the Doctor on stage for the entire opera (the stage itself is angled and curved in a way I fail at describing, but is brilliant and used brilliantly), so that he becomes a personification of Death.
As I've said before, I'm not innately a passionate devotee of most of the opera canon, but that doesn't mean I didn't leap at going to see the new (to the Met) production of this opera at the Met in New York when I was there in January. $24.50 rush tickets for the standing stalls in the back, hooray!
The opera concerns a Parisian courtesan who is dying of tuberculosis and the son of a wealthy bourgeois who loves her, and the conflict between true emotion and bourgeois morality that their love invokes. Quite frankly, all of this is interesting to me because it's based on the play La dame aux Camélias by Dumas fils, which was based on the novel he wrote about his experiences with the real-life courtesan Marie Duplessis, whose death broke his heart and who is now immortalized, in the second degree, in this opera. The less said about the bourgeois morality of everyone but Violetta, the better.
What really enthralled me here, though, was the production, which is new and contemporary and done by Willy Decker and mostly stunning and beautiful (though I questioned the choice to have the props and the singers wearing the same floral chintz pattern in the second act, but I get that it is Symbolic), and Maria Poplavskaya, who sings Violetta and is--in some ways I would call Violetta the forerunner of Emilia in The Makropulos Case--thoroughly brilliant in the role. Violetta is a compelling character with great strength of will who makes her own choices, constrained though they are, and she's hugely sympathetic. I also liked the obvious but effective choice of having the Doctor on stage for the entire opera (the stage itself is angled and curved in a way I fail at describing, but is brilliant and used brilliantly), so that he becomes a personification of Death.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-01 00:38 (UTC)It's still an incredible opera and Violetta is an unbelievably beautiful role. And Act I of La Traviata is one of my favorite things ever, it's just so perfectly constructed.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-01 00:49 (UTC)Yeah, I like Act I. Act III is interesting in the way it really draws out the final ending.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-01 04:15 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-01 20:45 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-01 22:30 (UTC)In any case, I'll be going to see Nixon in China in a week or two, and I only mind slightly that it's the same Peter Sellars production design from Houston I've already seen on DVD, because that is a fantastic production design.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-02 02:53 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-01 01:29 (UTC)! That sounds really interesting.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-01 01:49 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-01 02:49 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-01 02:51 (UTC)