The Met’s La Traviata is a thrilling riposte to Regietheater opera
It’s been a nightmare getting around New York this week. A measles scare, because anti-vaccine fundamentalists refused to be needled amidst a 285 case outbreak, caused a medical shutdown in gentrified Williamsburg, Brooklyn; then there was an outbreak of TubercuVerdi at the Met. This was the La Traviata strain – not to be confused with the similar TubercuPuccini – La Bohème strain. Both break out in the Metropolitan Opera’s season annually. Vaccinations are ineffectual.
Diagnostic dilemma: sometimes it’s difficult to tell the strains apart. Both are characterised by “late recovery syndrome,” when apparently stricken victims recoup, sing coloratura arias from a prone position – then snuff it. I risked the Verdi version, Michael Meyer’s production of La Traviata.
Traviata didn’t kick off well. Letter from Giuseppe Verdi to his only student, Emanuele Muzio, following the premiere of La Traviata on 6th March 1853 at La Fenice, Venice: “Dear Emanuele, La Traviata last night, fiasco. Is it my fault, or the fault of the singers? Time will tell”.
Muzio, a composer in his own right and a conductor who travelled as far afield as New York’s Academy of Music, was Verdi’s early sounding board and constant companion – much as was Arrigo Boito, his librettist in later years. Verdi enjoyed having a foil.
Part of the problem, so it goes, was that the plot, based on Alexandre Dumas’ “The Lady of the Camellias” was deemed immoral. What? In Venice? Home of the louche Carnivale? Discreet copies of Balzac, Stendhal and de Maupassant under every masked beauty’s pillow? Come off it!
Whatever caused the flop, a year later at another Venetian Theatre, San Benedetto, La Traviata triumphed – yet even then Verdi was leery about it being performed in Naples: “… my Traviata … I am going to make the world do her honour, but not at Naples where your priests would be terrified of seeing on stage the sort of thing they do themselves on the quiet.” Not much new there, then.
Verdi was an incorrigible tester of the boundaries of censorship – both political and moral. Of course, the world now does The Fallen Woman, La Traviata the regular honour Verdi sought for her.
A bit of Met Traviata history. Willy Decker, the German director behind their last 2007 Eurotrash (you can guess I really didn’t like it) production should have been locked up for his sins. It was an insane example of the post war Regietheater modernist cult so ably stiffed by Philip Patrick in the 29th March edition of Reaction Weekend.
Regietheater addicts shred writers’, composers’ and librettists’ scripts and reshape theatre, opera, whatever, to conform to their view of how the piece is “relevant” to the modern day. They love getting in the way. It’s “all about them.” In rejecting operas’ roots to make it – yeah, relevant – Mr. Decker and Regietheater have done for opera what David Cameron and Theresa May have managed for the British Conservative Party. Let’s dump the “nasty opera”!
For the record, the Met’s 2007 set was surreal, minimalist, dominated by a huge clock with a vague purpose, shaded de riguer pale gray. Absent the 19th century Parisian salon excess it was impossible to understand what the plot was all about. The chorus loomed like phantasms, lascivating over the most private exchanges between Violetta and her lover Alfredo.
And the deathblow to the whole shebang was the idiotic miscasting of the incomparable Natalie Dessay as Violetta. Ms. Dessay is an elfin figure with an irrepressible spirit. Suppressed mischief lurks in her every expression. The idea that she might carry off the tragic role of Violetta was bonkers. Every time she twitched I saw her gamine Marie in La Fille du Regiment.
Even the New York Times, which of course thought the “advanced production” wonderful – “woke” probably – reported reluctantly; “there was surprisingly little booing when Mr. Decker and his team took curtain calls on Friday night”. Result, then.
For this production the Met has turned to Broadway – producer Michael Meyer, the 58 year old Tony Award winning director and playwright, with 18 on-Broadway productions to his credit. Roll up, roll up, you new audiences. Opera is really just a great show. Actually, Verdi might possibly have agreed. Mr. Meyer also directed this season’s glitzy Marnie, by Nico Muhly. Great spectacle, rubbish music. Not his fault.
Mr. Meyer’s set is, on first sighting, a lavish 19th century interior in Rococo style, a simple horseshoe of many windows, generous curtains, set in filigree-plastered walls and sparingly furnished with a chaise longue, a piano, desk and some chairs. The entire proscenium supports a gossamer, sylvan sculpture, which frames the action. The eye and audience are drawn in.
A large aperture in the ceiling admits fine snow, a large cornucopia of flowers, dancing petals, or is a frescoed sky, highlighting the changing seasonal effect that flows through the action. It’s very beautiful and the wonder is how clever lighting instantaneously switches the scene from bedroom, to ballroom, to country house, to moody deathbed.
It has been criticised for being “Broadway kitsch”, probably by those who favour “Regietheater stark” and eat dustbowl cereal for breakfast. It’s truly beautiful – and allows for seamless action. A good example is in the second scene of Act II when we move from Violetta’s country house to Paris ballroom at the flick of a switch. The walls burst into pinpricks of light, the shading brightens, the chorus is suddenly in place and the transformation is complete in a nanosecond.
In most other productions I’ve seen this can be a clunky moment, with a lot of shuffling around of furniture. Not here. The suddenness of mood-change matters. It’s meant to grab attention, focus on a dramatic alteration in Violetta’s life, and does.
Costumes were period, but very brightly coloured. Almost Coney Island bright. You wouldn’t walk down Fifth Avenue in the shining yellows, bright reds, extravagant gold frogged dress coats and mind-blowing magenta ball gowns without being asked to step into Bergdorf Goodman’s window display.
Violetta wore simple white, a device which meant she was never lost amid the wide spectrum crowd, until the shade darkened subtly when she returned to Paris for the ball. Neat touch.
The anti Broadway brigade has howled “unsubtle”, but in my book costume designer, Susan Hilferty’s striking approach worked well. Do you really go to the Met for builders’ beige?
During the prelude we are handed a warning – a premonition of Violetta’s fate. She is lying on her chaise longue, surrounded by the dimly lit, static, figures of her lover, Alfredo Gaston, his father, Giorgio, Annina, Violetta’s nurse and Dr. Grenvil. Snow is falling lightly on the sleeping Violetta. We are in her dreams, dying.
Some have commented “spoiler alert”. Come off it. In every production I’ve seen Violetta is stumbling and hacking into a handkerchief from the get go. Does anyone not figure she is doomed from the start? The prequel device set a solemn tone that threw subsequent ballroom razzle into relief.
Another innovation – at least I’ve not come across it before – was that Alfredo’s sister, she whose marriage is to be scratched by her fiancé’s family because of the scandal of Alfredo living with the fallen woman, Violetta, hovers in the background – silent, of course, as she doesn’t feature in the libretto – a little distance from her father, Giorgio Germont as he pleads with Violetta – successfully – to give up his son, so hovering sister might marry her snobby fiancé.
The sister is a startling, white-clad Violetta doppelganger, perhaps a visual reproach to the courtesan, going someway to explaining her decision to reject Alfredo for the sake of the Germont family name.
Personally, I was sorry the priggish fiancé – the cause of all the trouble – didn’t appear as well. I would have punched his lights out for being the asshole he clearly is. But then, I’m not Verdi’s subtle librettist, Francesco Maria Piave. Best left to him.
This “fulcrum” scene at the heart of the opera was beautifully played. Two characters perform a transformational volte-face that drives the subsequent action. Violetta is slowly convinced that for the greater good she must give up Alfredo and Germont, Père arrives expecting to confront a brazen woman but leaves convinced of her virtue and generosity. The tension hung in the air as Violetta’s decision is in the balance. That twenty minutes, with its ebb and flow of tense emotions, was brought off to perfection.
This was the 1021st Met performance of La Traviata, and not with the familiarly stellar cast of Diana Damrau as Violetta, Juan Diego Florez as Alfredo and Quinn Kelsey as Germont, who opened the season. The spring performers – Anita Hartig, Stephen Costello and Artur Ruciński – were no disappointment. If anything, it was refreshing to see a new generation of less familiar talent storming the stage.
Ms. Hartig, a Romanian soprano, debuted at the Met in 2014 as a Carmen stand in and it’s not surprising they’ve called on her again. Her ability to carry Verdi’s long phrasing with precise breath control brought some electrifying moments. She has a beautiful, naturally flowing voice. No awkward stretching for high notes. And, essential for La Traviata, she died really well, with that burst of final, self-deluding energy, bathed in a white light, clearly her stairway to heaven.
Mr. Costello, a Philadelphia tenor, had all the freshness of a relative newcomer and demonstrated a clear understanding of the libretto and Alfredo’s somewhat unheroic role. The real plot-driving action in Traviata is between Violetta and Germont – that fulcrum scene again. They dictate Alfredo’s fate. He’s a passenger.
Star Afredos, like Juan Diego Florez, grab the attention by dint of simply “being there”. Mr. Costello, whose voice was every bit as fluidly appealing as his better-known role predecessor, fitted the role perfectly.
The stand out on the night was Polish baritone, Artur Ruciński, and he was rewarded by a highly appreciative audience. He is called on to deliver his changing attitude to Violetta in a series of subtle asides to which only the audience is privy. He handled the changing shape of the dialogue beautifully. We were up to speed with his changing sentiments. Violetta was unaware.
In the pit we had Nicola Luisoti, the Italian conductor and music director of San Francisco Opera. He got the best from the Met band – which is top class – and at critical moments his hand shot from the pit to encourage a perfectly executed sostenuto, shape a mournful horn phrase, or bring in the chorus with crashing effect. He’s always a cheerful presence and Verdi seems to flow in his Viareggio-born blood.
The Met needs a top class Traviata in its repertoire locker. In Mr. Meyer’s production they have one that will endure. Regietheatercide has been committed! Away drab, surreal hokum. Willy Decker is currently ruining Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito in Florence, with a set featuring an enormous head and a pile of rocks. We are back with Verdi’s beloved fallen woman, Broadway tints and all, in Manhattan. Hooray!