Teatro del Maggio

In winter 1852 Giuseppe Verdi was in Paris. Here, at the Théâtre du Vaudeville, he witnessed one of the first representations of the Dame aux camelias, the theatrical adaptation of the novel by Alexandre Dumas fils. The drama of the courtesan Marguerite Gautier, modeled on the real Marie Duplessis, who challenge the bourgeois conventions and seeks redemption in the love of Armand, profoundly affected the composer. The subject of the new work was quickly decided and on March 6, 1853 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice Verdi staged La Traviata. But censorship could not tolerate such a harsh realism and required Verdi to backdate the story in a more reassuring "about 1700." Perhaps it is for this reason that the first representation turned into a fiasco. As Verdi himself wrote, complaining on this edulcorations: "They have made Traviata pure and innocent. Thank you very much! A whore should always be a whore. If the sun was shining in the night, there would be no more night!"

La traviata
Opera in three acts
Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, from drama La dame aux camélias, by Alexandre Dumas fils
Music by Giuseppe Verdi

Production property of Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini di Jesi from scene sketches by Josef Svoboda

Sing in Italian. Surtitles in English and Italian.

Artists

Conductor
Zubin Mehta

Direction and light design
Henning Brockhaus

Scene sketches
Josef Svoboda

Scenic reproduction
Benito Leonori

Costumes
Giancarlo Colis

Choreografies
Valentina Escobar

Choir director
Lorenzo Fratini

Orchestra and Choir of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Maggio Danza

Violetta
Eva Mei (01,04,08) / Ekaterina Sadovnikova (02,07)

Alfredo Germont
Ivan Magrì (01,04,08) / Aquiles Machado (02,07)

Giorgio Germont
Paolo Gavanelli (01,04,08) / Simone Piazzola (02,07)

Gastone
Enrico Cossutta

Flora
Anastasia Boldyreva

Barone Douphol
Francesco Verna

Marchese d'Obigny
Italo Proferisce

Dottor Grenvil
Alessandro Spina

Annina
Simona Di Capua

Giuseppe
Davide Cusumano

Commissionario
Nicolò Ayroldi

Servo
Luciano Roberti

ACT I

There is a party at the home of the Parisian courtesan Violetta Valery. The Viscount Gaston de Letorièrs introduces her to Alfredo Germont, who, long infatuated with the hostess, dedicates to her a toast. While the guests move into the ballroom, Violetta, suddenly feeling ill, is forced to stop. Alfredo seizes the moment to declare his love; at first she invites him to forget her, then gives him a flower begging him to return it when it is withered, that is, the following day. Left alone, she reflects on the strange turmoil caused by Alfredo's declaration while from afar, the young man's voice continues to reiterate his love.

ACT II

The two lovers have been living in the countryside for several months. Alfredo, informed by the maid Annina that Violetta is selling her possessions to pay the bills, hurries to Paris in search of a solution. Meanwhile Giorgio Germont, young Alfredo's father, pays a visit: the family honor is at stake and Alfredo's conduct is threatening the marriage of his sister. Violetta agrees to sacrifice herself and leaves her lover with the excuse of wanting to return to her previous life. Alfredo, consoled by his father, finds an invitation to a party from her friend Flora Bervoix and decides to participate. Violet arrives at the party with the Baron Douphol, her former lover. Alfredo, in front of everyone, announces his intention to settle his debts and throws the money just won at the gaming table at her. Violetta faints and Alfredo, after being scolded by his father, leaves among general contempt.

ACT III

Violetta rests in her bedroom, watched over by Annina. To her the doctor reveals that her mistress, suffering from tuberculosis, has only a few hours left to live. Violetta, disconsolate, rereads a letter from Germont in which he tells her that he confessed everything to his son. Alfredo finally arrives and the two, embracing, dream of a future together away from Paris; Germont rushes in but it is too late; after having given her portrait to her beloved, Violetta dies.

GIUSEPPE VERDI

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was born in Le Roncole di Busseto, near Parma, on October 10, 1813. He learned the rudiments of music by playing the organ in the local parish and in 1832, thanks to the patronage of Antonio Barezzi he moved to Milan, despite not being admitted to the Conservatory. Oberto conte di San Bonifacio, his first opera, is staged with moderate success at La Scala in 1839 but it is Nabucco, three years later, that is his first great triumph. After many masterpieces, including Ernani (1844) and Macbeth(1847), is born the "popular trilogy": Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata (1851-1853). He reiceived important commissions from abroad: Les vêpres siciliennes (Paris, 1855), La forza del destino (St. Petersburg, 1862), Don Carlos (Paris, 1867) and Aida(Cairo, 1871). After the Requiem Mass (1874), Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893), he died in Milan on January 27, 1901.

HENNING BROCKHAUS

A native of Plettenberg, Germany, in 1965 he graduated in languages and began his music studies at the Nordwestdeutsche Musikakademie of Detmold where he graduated in clarinet and continued the study of composition. He continued his studies at the Freie Universität Berlin studying psychology, philosophy and science of the theater. In 1975 he met Giorgio Strehler, and later became a close associate. From 1984 to 1989 he was playwright and director at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris. Among his most acclaimed productions are Rigoletto, La Traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Madama Butterfly and Attila for the Macerata Opera Festival, Otello at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna and Macbeth and Elektra for the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Lecturer at IUAV in Venice and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Macerata, in 2004 he founded the Bottega del Teatro Musicale, the first school of musical theater. He received the Premio Abbiati from the Italian music critics for La Traviata and El Cimarrón.

Reflections

by Henning Brockhaus

In most of the productions of La Traviata, one may say that from the very beginning of its history, the sharp point of social complaint and inherent morals has been deliberately removed from the story of Marie Duplessis then Marguerite Gautier in "The Lady of the Camellias", then Violetta Valéry. Verdi himself had had forebodings in this regard and made the very important change of moving the whole story into the eighteenth century, in the hopes that the temporal remoteness would make acceptable to the public the subject of the opera that was burning with its contemporary heat, as Dumas wanted. La Traviata was too "close".
Even setting the story in the right era, in 1850 or a little later as is now commonly used, does not change the fact that La Traviata is an opera in costume and not, as was originally thought, an opera in contemporary costumes. The historical distance remains in any case, hindering any possible actualization of facts and problems that are represented in the scenario.
A crucial point is that there is nothing left of what Dumas characterized by the term "demi-monde", or speaking of Violetta's living room as "Ce cloaque splendide" (this splendid cesspool). What you usually see is a bonbon of costumes and settings in which transpires an almost abstract love story. Instead, it is important to understand that Violetta is a "whore," as Giuseppe Verdi clearly and literally said. The world of La Traviata and the male customs known as "La maladie du Siècle", that is the rejection of the rational bourgeois world, the search for adventure, pleasure and entertainment, as well as heavy physical repercussions related to sex and prostitution, are aspects often hidden or just evoked. The Dumas novel is of more help in bringing out certain situations and attitudes.
Thus, we begin with the financial and social defeat of Violetta, the sale of the furniture, to follow with her mental defeat and the death of her immense love. The point that interests us is her personal journey, from the shallowness of a society in which her life was a cheerful commodity towards human emancipation, we are interested in her choice of a life of true and deep feelings and, of course, the inability of Alfredo to follow. This is the relevance of the story, each time contemporary because it is true and human, across the ages.
In this production the time of the action takes place around 1900. The reasons are aesthetic and social: the fashion of the time is much more sensual and refined than that of twenty years before and the opulence and social decadence are clearly historically delineated. The costumes are inspired by the paintings of Giovanni Boldini, the portraitist of the Parisian feminine beau monde at the end of the century; ethereal dresses, characters barely dressed or dressed very lightly because here, in truth, it is not a banquet in a house but the elegant living room of the most beautiful prostitute in Paris.
Regarding the scenery, the only fixed system is a huge mirror in front of the wall that on one side limits and concentrates the action on a focal point, and on the other works to mirror and alienate the truth of a drama that reflects yet again the sacrifice of a living being as the tragic outcome of male erotic voyeurism. The mirror, therefore, reflects the action on stage. The individual scenes are painted on large canvases lying on the floor like huge carpets over which actors move; a collage of various paintings with erotic motifs taken from prints of the time. This mixture between painting and reality metaphorically creates a kaleidoscope of associations and ideas, and when in the end there will be no more pictures and the floor will remain depressingly bare, it means that the time for illusions is over.
All the necessary props are located on the two outer sides of the mirror and are in view. The methodology of the director is admittedly "epic" according to the Brechtian model: in front of the audience a story is told materially constructed in real time, actors and singers enter into action bringing with them what they need and openly demonstrating the scene. This is because we are interested in the situations, feelings, attitudes and their changes, the plot we know by heart. In traditional theater, the audience watches as an eyewitness, or rather like a voyeur spying through the keyhole an action that takes place independently on the other side of the curtain, external and extraneous.
The voyeuristic component is not denied here, on the contrary it is enhanced through repeated mechanisms of reflections and mixtures that lead to an identification as concrete as it is psychological with the narrative. Along with telling the story, we also tell what is not written, neither with the words or the music, at the same time we also tell what happened before a given situation, obviously what is "under the text", that is, the intentions and the true states of mind, the contradictions that are between the lines. The mirror in this sense works perfectly as an attractor of reality while offering a variety of perspectives.
The viewer sees the scene horizontally but also sees the vertical reflection in which all the action is viewed from above, the zenith; this view is entirely new in theater and it seems to offer more information, almost not legitimate. At the end of the opera, the mirror turns to a ninety degree angle to the stage so that the audience in the stalls and boxes are reflected in the story that is about to end. It is an action a bit brutal that hinders the "enjoyment", long-awaited, of the death of Violetta. The mirror, incontrovertibly and without escape, catapults the audience into the action, confusing victim and offender, we are all now responsible concerning the world of the "weak" of which Violetta was part.

Stalls 1	€ 100
Stalls 2	€ 80
Stalls 3	€ 60
Boxes / Gallery 1	€ 35
Gallery 2	€ 20
Limited visibility	€ 10

Season 2014/2015

Opera

La Traviata

Artists

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

GIUSEPPE VERDI

HENNING BROCKHAUS

Reflections

by Henning Brockhaus

Dates

Prices

Where

Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino