La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi

Since my decision to focus on the comic operas is rather recent, whereas my habit of booking tickets months in advance is not, I still have a number of, shall we say, not so light operas to review. One such example is Verdi's La Traviata that I attended in (at?) Bastille on December 11, 2018. I will try hard not to spoil the plot for those who do not know it, but let us just say that it fits well into your regular operatic storyline. You know, the one with a foreseeable yet dramatic death at the end (oops, sorry!)

Main characters: meet Violetta, a courtesan living a perfectly instagrammable life in XIX century Paris. Meet Alfredo, a young man from a "good" family who has fallen in love with her prior to their actual first meeting, I believe.

Violetta is touched by Alfredo's pure (or premature, if you ask my opinion) affection, and they begin a relationship. A few months after, the guy's father comes to plead with her to leave his son alone because she is ruining the family's reputation. The horror. <\shrug\>

I understand that it was a different time back then, so no matter how ridiculous the situation, I am not holding this part of the plot against Verdi (or rather, Alexandre Dumas Jr, whose La Dame aux camélias the libretto was based upon). But my god, is Violetta enjoying playing the victim during the father's visit! I can be a bit of a drama queen myself at times, and I can certainly sympathize with what she must be going through, but next time I am about to lose it, I'll think of that aria and hopefully that alone will be enough for me to keep myself together.

Aesthetics-wise, the music was beautiful and so was the set. By the way, do you notice how each of us somehow comes to learn a handful of opera tunes before ever setting foot in a theater? Alfredo’s “toast” aria in the first act is definitely one of these instantly recognizable pieces. Here is a recording from the Met (unrelated note: I found the cast to be much more suitable for the roles in the production that I attended). I dare you to take a peek and tell me you’ve never heard it before! Where do opera bits make it into in our everyday life though? Laundry detergent commercials on TV? Hotel elevator playlists? I give up.

The set, designed by Sylvain Chauvelot, was super elaborate and cool; here are some pictures I got off the official website:

Image credit: Sébastien Mathé, Opera National de Paris

Seating to avoid in Opera Bastille, Paris

I had trouble hearing Violetta's parts at times, which may have been due to where I was sitting: row 35, place 23 in the parterre (again, that was Opera Bastille, not Palais Garnier). There are a couple of pocket-like areas on that level that I would advise you to avoid, the acoustics seem to take a hit.

My final highly subjective verdict: 5/10 (why not, but don’t go out of your way to attend)

XOXO

Olga

La Cenerentola by Gioacchino Rossini

Running two operas and one ballet behind - got to get on with it before I fly off to Tierra del Fuego for the holidays, and recollections of Cinderella and a certain french courtesan (opera and ballet adaptations of Dumas’ La Dame aux Camélias coming up next) get replaced with memories of glaciers and (hopefully!) baby penguins in my head.

A mere week after attending the french ballet Cendrillon at Bastille, I went back to Garnier for the Italian opera La Cenerentola. Come to think about it, Cinderella’s story does not technically have anything to do with either Christmas or New Years, does it? Yet, I don’t know how you, the reader, feel about Christmas, but my inner Russian stubbornly maintains the belief in New Year miracles (my inner physicist, on the other hand, can’t help a smirk). So yes, where there is New Years, there are miracles, and that includes Cinderella. Could be that this was the logic behind l’Opéra de Paris’ programming, or could be that they intentionally like to pair operas with corresponding ballets: having watched La Traviata and La Dame aux Camélias on two subsequent Tuesdays gives some credibility to the latter theory.

I’ve got a plane to catch in a few hours, so lets dive right into the first act. The first act made me want to climb onto the stage and punch the title character in the face. Didn’t see that coming, did you? Well, neither did I. Sure there is always some variation between the different versions of this fairy-tale, but normally they all at least have one thing in common: Cinderella is depicted as a hard working self-respecting young woman and yeah, she marries a prince later, but that’s hardly the point. I am sure in any case she would have done well enough for herself, especially if she was lucky to live in a society with enough social mobil… where were we?

Unlike the Cinderella that we know and love, Rossini’s Cenerentola is a whiny little b*tch, pardon my unoperatic language. She mostly whines a lot, sings [about a king marrying a commoner #lifegoals] when other people ask her not to (for all we know, it could be 4 am), and alludes to some hidden “virtue” she supposedly has. Yickes. This goes on for much of the first act, the latter being partially salvaged by Cenerentola’s not being the sole main character in the story. The prince and his valet undergo a classic switch, and both get a significant amount of stage time.

Another redeeming quality of La Cenerentola was the casting: Florian Sempey as the valet/prince/valet and Lawrence Brownlee as the prince/valet/prince. I have already encountered the duo in Don Pasquale a few months back, where the two played Dottor Malatesta and Ernesto respectively, and both there and in La Cenerentola, they could not have been a better fit for the roles. Florian’s Dandini is hillarious, and Lawrence’s Ramiro comes out quite three-dimensional unlike the girl. I am not dissing whoever sang Cinderella’s part by the way, my problem is with the story (or rather, the lyrics that make the story roll).

The second act was quite a bit better than the first one: (a) it was shorter, (b) Cinderella had less stage time in it than she did in the first act, and (c) the whole thing just seemed more dynamic somehow. Thanks to Florian and Lawrence’s performance and the second act, La Cenerentola ends up with

My final highly subjective verdict: 5/10 (why not, but don’t go out of your way to attend)

XOXO

Olga