La Traviata, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, April 14 2012

Whatever the director of this La Traviata was trying to get at, it escaped me. For the first act, I was willing to grant the staging a grudging “I don’t understand this, but perhaps it works.” But by the end, it was clear that it didn’t work for me. Talk about minimalist staging! Every act, every scene was played on a nearly bare stage, half-enclosed by a semicircular wall whose height fell a few feet from the left of the stage to the rear, then rose again to the right of the stage. A looooong bench ran along the bottom of the wall, all the way from left to right. A very large clock dominated the right edge of the stage. A white-haired man in a long overcoat sat, or stood, and viewed the action impassively—I took him to be the Grim Reaper, but in the final act he turned out to be Dr. Grenvil.

The only additional stage prop in Act 1 was a squared-off sofa, which the party-goers used to hoist Violetta on high. Everyone except Violetta, even Flora, was dressed like a man: black suit, white shirt, thin black tie. Violetta herself was in a bright red dress. In Act 2, after an intermission, we had five sofas, covered with bright floral prints. There was no writing table, so when Violetta needed to write her notes to Flora and to Alfredo, she took her materials from the seat of a rear-facing sofa and used the top of the sofa as a writing surface. At Flora’s party, the clock was turned into a roulette wheel, although Alfredo is gambling at cards. And there wasn’t even a bed in the final act; Annina had no water to give Violetta, nor any window to open to let in some light, and in the final moments Violetta gave Alfredo a silk flower rather than a portrait to remember her.

Our cast:
Violetta Valéry: Natalie Dessay
Alfredo Germont: Matthew Polenzani
Giorgio Germont: Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Annina: Maria Zifchak
Doctor Grenvil: Luigi Roni
Conductor: Fabio Luisi
Production: Willy Decker

Natalie Dessay sang very well and acted her part with the intensity that she so prominently displayed a few years ago in The Daughter of the Regiment. Matthew Polenzani seemed to crack, ever so slightly, a fair number of notes. Normally I’m very fond of Dmitri Hvorostovsky, but his Germont was completely without character—just like the sets. No interest in seeing this one again; a gamma.