THEATER REVIEW: LA TRAVIATA

A scene from the L.A. Opera production of Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata

Bye bye Verdi

By Ed Rampell

Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata is based on the same Alexandre Dumas novel about a doomed paramour that the 1936 Greta Garbo classic Camille is also derived from. Because of Verdi’s music, the operatic version is less maudlin than George Cukor’s movie adaptation, although both are highly melodramatic.

La Traviata’s first act is enlivened by some lovely fast paced music, with lyrics espousing insouciance and gaiety. Act I takes place in 1847 at the Parisian home of courtesan Violetta Valery, who was played by Marina Poplaskaya at the premiere (coloratura soprano Elizabeth Futral takes over the role June 10-21). The music paints a transcendent vision of a hedonistic lifestyle, especially as Russian soprano Poplaskaya angelically hits the high notes. After flirtations and protestations of true love, Violetta and Alfredo Germont (played by Italian tenor Massimo Giordano from opening night through May 30, to be replaced by Alexey Dolgov June 3-21) decide to embark on a passionate affair.

But after the couple moves to Violetta’s country home, their idyll of love does not last long -- as it often has a nasty habit of doing, fate intervenes. The second scene in Act II takes place at the party of another courtesan, Flora (mezzo-soprano Margaret Thompson), in what seems to be a bordello. This is scenery and costume designer Giovanni Agostinucci’s only La Traviata set that sparkles. For many L.A. Opera aficionados the sets can be co-stars, and the rest of sets are ho-hum. They lack the flair and verve displayed in recent L.A. Opera productions, such as the cathedral and fortress sets in Tosca, the nightclub and plaza in Carmen, the laboratory in The Fly, etc.

During Flora’s party masqueraders garbed as gypsies and matadors perform lively, enchanting dances in the brothel. But as the tale of star-crossed lovers unfolds, the story, Verdi’s music and Francesco Maria Piave’s Italian libretto become increasingly depressing. Poplaskaya excels as the lady of the camellias expires, but the deathbed routine is a bit too much. To tell the truth, in our day and age of endless war and economic collapse, it’s hard to have much empathy for these self-involved characters obsessed with their own petty lives and affairs, and with little else. La Traviata ends in 1848, the year Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto and revolution swept Europe, but -- with the possible exception of the snobbery and moralizing of Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont (Polish baritone Andrzej Dobber, May 21-June 6 and baritone Stephen Powell, June 10-21) --one would never know it from this opera. (Who knows -- maybe Europe’s proletariat and peasantry revolted in 1848 to get rid of self-indulgent people like those depicted in La Traviata?)

Relating to the story's bourgeois fripperies today is increasingly difficult to do while Rome burns, and this opera seems oddly out of place with our life and times. Even Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, with its themes of destiny, warfare, greed and power struggles, and which L.A. Opera is in the process of presenting, seems more apropos, even though this saga based on Aryan mythology is set eons before La Traviata takes place. Not long ago L.A. Opera presented Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which also has courtesan characters and wherein the male lead is tried for the high crime of not having any money. Somehow, this seems to be the type of relevant work opera needs more of during our present hard times.

La Traviata is being performed at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com..