Innovation and Tradition
Verdi's 'La Traviata' at the
start of La Scala's new season,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
start of La Scala's new season,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
The Seventh
of December is a 'holy day' for Italian opera goers: in
the Roman Catholic calendar,
it is the celebration of St
Ambrose, the patron of Milan and, thus, the day when La Scala's new season starts. The La Scala
'inauguration' is a major affair with the Head of
State, the President of the European Commission, the Mayor
of Milan and a few Ministers in the royal box. A black tie is required for a
charity performance where orchestra and central box seats are
priced at 2,400 euros each. I was one of the few reviewers who gained
accreditation: row K, seat no 1 on the right hand side of the stalls.
This year
the evening was much awaited because for
the first time in one hundred and sixty
years, La Traviata was
scheduled as the opening opera. This is one of Verdi's most performed operas at La Scala -- and according
to Operabase the most programmed opera (of all composers) all over the world for the next three years.
Why have La
Scala's various managers shied away, in the past, from choosing La Traviata for the
most important evening of the season? Even
though La Traviata was composed in a very short time and its
genesis was thoroughly entangled with that of Il Trovatore, it is
apparently not easy to set on stage. Firstly, it requires a very
special soprano with a light register full of coloratura
ornamentations until the middle of the second act where at the short arioso Amani Alfredo, she has to
switch into a heavy dramatic soprano. Secondly, the tenor must be able to handle
acrobatic cabaletta (like in Donizetti's operas) but must have also
a heavy spinto posture with high Cs and difficult E flats. Thirdly, the baritone has to handle some of Verdi's
most complex arias. Fourthly, the orchestration requires a
special tint because the drama, indeed the tragedy, is set in a context where waltz tunes saturate the score to make the audience feel the Parisian setting. Fifthly, singers, conductor, orchestra and chorus must deal skillfully with two
different operas intertwined with one
another: a chamber opera with a few characters on stage
(and a comparatively small number of instruments playing in
the pit) in many parts, and large public scenes in the first and the second
acts with concertato and even dancers. This needs a very delicate balance.
To make
things even more complicated, Verdi considered La Traviata as a contemporary opera where
singers should wear the same attire as the audience, and stage sets should mirror palaces, apartments
and country houses familiar to the bourgeoisie and to
opera goers in general in the mid-nineteenth century. At La Fenice Theatre in Venice, where the opera was
premiered in 1853, the time of the action was changed to the eighteenth century for
censorship reasons, but shortly later, again in Venice, at the San Bartolomeo
Theatre, it was staged in a 'contemporary' setting and with contemporary costumes. Since, as M&V readers
know, there are two basic approaches to handle staging of La Traviata: to
recreate the context of a deluxe Second Empire -- the bigger, the better -- or
to actualize the events to modern times (even with quite a bit of
transgression due to certain aspects of the plot). In La Scala, the first approach prevailed for one hundred and
sixty years; since the nineteen fifties, grandiose stagings by Luchino
Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli and Liliana Cavani have dominated the theatre.
The
reception on 7 December 2013 to the staging by Russian director and stage set designer Dmitri
Tcherniakov, and to Yelena Zaytseva's costumes, was quite tame during the
performance when the audience followed the action and music very intensively.
They exploded at curtain calls with a battery of boos from the upper tier and
then expanded to other parts of the auditorium, whilst a
large section of the audience gave a tribute of twelve minutes of applause and accolades to singers,
orchestra and also to the staging. Quite a confusion ensued: in leaving La
Scala, the eighty-seven-year-old Head of State told the press that 'tradition is important but innovation
must be encouraged'- a rather vague statement. In my view, two different groups
converged in protesting about Tcherniakov and his team: on the one hand, old
time traditionalists, and on the other those who, based on previous stagings by
Tcherniakov (also at La Scala), expected a more daring approach with sex, drugs
and maybe even blood. In addition, there might have been domestic feuds within
the theatre to fuel the upper tier boos.
Tcherniakov
depicts a simple but passionate 'love story' between two unlucky young people; it happens today in any
European country where there is a pretending-to-be-prude upper middle class, on the one hand, and free sexual mores bordering on
prostitution, on the other. The staging is carefully detailed and full of good ideas. Acting is very skillful. This is why
the production enthralled
the 'under thirties', who were only young people admitted at the 4 December preview.
On the
musical side, Daniele Gatti gave a poignant reading of the score; he slowly
expanded the tempos somewhat in the most dramatic
and intimate parts of the opera and quickened them in the more public scenes.
Diana Damrau's Violetta was the star of the evening.
She changed vocal character beautifully: from the
exuberant acrobatics in the first act, through the passionate declamation in
the second, to the well-nigh ethereal qualities in Act III. She received open
stage applause after her main arias and real open stage accolades after Addio
del Passato. Piotr Beczała was her 'Alfredo'; he is quite well known at the
Metropolitan Opera House and at the Royal Opera House and knows
the role inside out. He is also an
excellent actor. He was given several rounds
of open stage applause -- eg after Dei Miei Bollenti Spiriti. Željko
Lučić was his father; he received his fair share
of applause after the lyrical andante Di
Provenza il Mar, il Suol. The rest of the company was of a good level.
In summary,
after an intense performance with much
applause during each act, the boos at the end were quite unexpected. Most
probably, the upper tier climate will improve as the other performances continue
and the staging is not seen any longer as so innovative. I remember
the boos at the Traviata produced by Peter Mussbach in Summer 2003; for the last ten years the
production has been standard fare at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter-Den-Linden.
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