My opera sources, such as they are, tell me a second company within day-tripping distance of my midwestern U.S. base is about to announce a '10-'11 season lineup that includes La Traviata.
Can we stop? Please?
One, we're trivializing a great opera. Two, is it really that great? Let's face it: all the best music is in Act I, and then the bitch just takes forever to die. At the end of the second intermission my gin-and-tonic is like, "You're leaving me to go back in there with her?"
Here's the irony: The most admirable qualities of La Traviata are precisely what can save us from La Traviata.
In the recent run-up to Elmer Gantry in Milwaukee, I read about its tortured path to the stage: how it took 17 years, how the composer and librettist nearly went broke, how nobody wants to risk hundreds of thousands of dollars producing an unproven show. Duly noted, and Gantry is a marvel, but honestly - it has two dozen singers and 13 effing scene changes. And that's the cut-down version. For a Sinclair Lewis adaptation. Thank god they didn't start with Dune.
La Traviata, meanwhile, has four roles, modest sets, and a story as simple as it is universal. That's what made it revolutionary in its time. These days a high school could put it on. OK, a high school with one three-octave soprano. But you get the idea. It's easy to see why an opera company, especially in this economy, would embrace the show. It's just too bad there aren't more options like it that haven't been so many times around the operatic block.
For the sake of poor Violetta and her ever-failing health, let's prescribe some long-overdue treatment, for her and for opera: a dosage of new shows modeled on what's truly great about La Traviata. And a temporary quarantine from the original.
Hah!! This is hilarious and sooo damn true. You are brillant. I'll be reading regularly now :)
Posted by: LaToya Lewis | 03/29/2010 at 05:11 PM
Impressive blog! -Arron
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