La Traviata Revisited

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The production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata the global audience will view on March 11, 2017 has been acknowledged as one of general manager Peter Gelb’s successful importations. Director Willy Decker’s interpretation travelled to the Met in late 2010 bearing the prestige of the full-blown Regietheater (director’s opera) concept that was the darling of critics and public at its 2005 Salzburg premiere. While some New York reviewers saw this Traviata as a Eurotrash challenge to the performance practice of the fourth-most-frequently-programmed title in the repertoire, many applauded the Met’s determination to train a contemporary lens on to a canonical nineteenth-century narrative.

Decker emptied the stage of whatever might distract from his reading: that the protagonist is stalked by two implacable foes, her illness and the patriarchal society that engulfs her. Banished were the picturesque mock-ups of nineteenth-century France indulged in previous editions, notably in Franco Zeffirelli’s two extravagant Met antecedents; the luxurious ballroom, the charming country hideaway, the splendid gambling house, and the dying woman’s bedroom were jettisoned in favor of a bare, curved wall, a bench, a few boxy modern sofas, and a giant clock. Violetta exchanged her long gowns for a short red dress and white slip.

Franco Zeffirelli production: 1998

Willy Decker Production: 2010

The dumb show enacted at the start prefigures the end. As the conductor gives the downbeat, Violetta enters, staggers slowly across the stage, doubled over in pain, and then collapses into the arms of her aged doctor, an incarnation of death whose recurring presence haunts the action. When the final notes of the mournful prelude fade away, the chorus of menacing merrymakers, male and female dressed alike as men in dark business suits, is propelled by the feverish rhythm toward the lone, frightened woman in red. A moment later, she morphs into the dissolute party girl. Decker’s La Traviata has become a high-profile addition to the company’s slim stock of illuminating rereadings.

The composer based his story on La Dame aux camélias (The Lady of the Camellias), Alexandre Dumas, fils’ clamorous stage success. La Traviata alone, among Verdi’s nearly thirty operas, depicts a woman of his own time. By in large his heroines are drawn from the hyperbole of Romantic melodrama and of grand historic events—Lady Macbeth, Joan of Arc, Abigaille in the court of Babylon, Leonora in medieval Spain, Aïda in Ancient Egypt to name only a few. The country house where Violetta renounces her dream of love and the Parisian bedroom where she dies are locations familiar to Verdi’s contemporary audience.

As the composer charts the transformation of his protagonist from the carefree, pleasure-seeking courtesan of Act I, to a woman seeking true love, finding it, losing it, then regaining it moments before her death in Act III  he demands various and distinct registers of expression. Like the famed stage and screen actresses, Bernhardt, Duse, Nazimova, Garbo, who coveted the role of Dumas’ Marguerite Gautier, sopranos of all stripes have embraced the theatrical and musical challenges of Verdi’s Violetta, high coloraturas, lyrics, spintos, and even heroic dramatics. Few have succeeded in meeting all of its claims.

This comment on La Traviata features a single artist, the Catalan Montserrat Caballé, at three turning points in the libretto. The first demands the mastery of florid singing, the second of declamation, and the third of legato. Caballé is that rare soprano proficient in the range of expressivity demanded by Verdi’s evolving protagonist.

If Caballé’s portrait of the consumptive demi-mondaine was abetted neither by her looks nor by her acting skills, her voice and passion made Violetta come alive. Here is her “Sempre libera” with tenor Carlo Bergonzi, excerpted from a commercial recording. Profligate in the emission of resplendent high notes, fluent in the embellishments, Caballé captures the frenzy of the young woman in a spectacular coloratura display.

Violetta’s Act II idyll is brutally interrupted when she comes face to face with the reality that, given her past, society will not allow her happiness. She bids an anguished farewell to the bewildered Alfredo, pouring out a flood of tone in her plea that he love her as much as she loves him. This is one of the moments in the score where Caballé, a full spinto, deploys vocal resources unavailable to the light coloraturas who often sing the part. Here is her "Amami, Alfredo" drawn from the same recording.

In Act III, the dying heroine draws comfort from a letter sent by Alfredo’s father, all the while knowing that the end is upon her. Here, Caballé’s extraordinary breath control and her legendary piano singing sustain the long legato phrases of “Addio del passato,” ending in an ethereal final note. This 1974 aria is drawn from a live performance.