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.

Rosina, High and Low

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Gioacchino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, presented in New York in 1825, was the first opera in Italian to be heard in the city, just nine years after its Rome world premiere. That November night at the Park Theatre on Park Row the audience included Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist of Le Nozze di Figaro, among other Mozart operas. Le Nozze was seen this season in the Met’s “Live in HD” series and was the subject of a recent OperaPost. Il Barbiere di Siviglia will be simulcast on November 22. Both operas are based on comedies by the 18^th-century French playwright Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. Il Barbiere has rarely been absent from the Met since its very first season, 1883-84, Le Nozze since 1939-40.

We focus here on Rosina, the lead female character of Il Barbiere, and a rare example of a role in the core repertoire that has been attributed to either the high or low voice. Rossini wrote Rosina for Geltrude Righetti, the contralto who also created Angelina in his La Cenerentola. But despite the composer’s intentions, throughout the 19^th century and much of the 20^th the part has been held hostage by sopranos who have had few qualms about raising the key of some passages, singing the higher octave of others, and interpolating high notes where none were indicated. In 2006-07, for example, coloratura soprano Diana Damrau was the season’s first Rosina; mezzo Joyce DiDonato took over later and can be seen in the video of the simulcast. Here they are in the familiar “Una voce poco fà,” They are both terrific.

Whether performed by high soprano or mezzo soprano, Rosina is a showcase for prodigious dexterity. The opera’s scenario incudes a singing lesson for which Rossini provided an aria, “Contro un cor.” It became common practice, however, for sopranos to depart from the score and substitute pieces that better showed off their virtuosity. In 1883, the “Letter Scene” simply stole the show. One reviewer of the Met’s first performance gave his notice over to Marcella Sembrich’s mini-concert during which the Rosina selected the difficult Proch variations and two German songs, all of which post-date the character’s playlist. In the course of her sixty-four subsequent Met Rosinas, a record still unbroken, Sembrich sometimes sang Bellini, sometimes Chopin or Johann Strauss. In the 1920s, Amelita Galli-Curci picked a bel canto aria, not necessarily by Rossini, and followed it religiously with “Home Sweet Home,” the latter chosen to privilege the singer’s legendary legato and creamy timbre. This is Galli-Curci’s 1927 recording of the old standard.

The Met’s first experiment with a mezzo Rosina, a single performance by Jennie Tourel in 1945, left reviewers cold. In the new production of February 1954, the audience at last heard Rossini’s own aria in the “Lesson Scene,” but it was sung by coloratura Roberta Peters. Two months later Rosina was restored to her earthier, mezzo self. The rapturously received Victoria de los Angeles made an irrefutable case for the lower voice. And mezzos Teresa Berganza and Marilyn Horne ultimately ended the hegemony of the high coloratura. Since then, mezzos have taken the advantage, two to one. This Saturday’s Rosina will be mezzo Isabel Leonard. 

In point of fact, male roles dominate Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Nonetheless, the jocular baritone, the dulcet-toned tenorino, the scene-stealing basso buffo and basso profondo have often played second banana, served up with great gobs of shaving soap, to Rosina, high or low.  The production that will be heard and seen this Saturday was new in 2006-07. Wittily staged by Bartlett Sher, its cast formed a remarkable ensemble for which bel canto embellishment was a sign of joy rather than an excuse for vocal calisthenics. The other role that requires extensive embellishment is that of Count Almaviva. His “Cessa di più resistere,” restored at the Met only in recent decades, is a long aria that tests the display of fioritura and the legato of cantilena and crowns the comic climax. Here is how this coming Saturday’s Almaviva, Lawrence Brownlee, sang it in concert in 2005.