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Apr. 14th, 2018 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn...I've got one more Traviata post in the queue after this one, but will hopefully be done with Traviata posts after that. Though not with opera, because apparently Traviata and Verdi between them broke my brain!
La Traviata, Fleming/Calleja/Hampson 4/5. Royal Opera House, 2009. This is what I would nominate for the best first Traviata to watch. The cast is spectacular. Renée Fleming is Renée Fleming, and as far as I'm concerned is the best whatever-it-is-she's-playing whenever I see her in anything. I mean, she has the most gorgeous voice ever, she's an incredible actress (both vocally and visually) who sells whatever part it is, she is totally beautiful, she seems to have chemistry with everybody! And of course I am a huge fan of Hampson, and this is a great production for him -- he gets to play a rather reserved but ultimately quite sympathetic Giorgio Germont, which plays to his strengths as a subtle actor. Calleja, um, maybe isn't quite as easy on the eyes as the other two (I am super shallow, ok), and more to the point I'm not as convinced by his acting/interpretation -- he seems to tend towards the more angry sort of Alfredo -- but he has a gorgeous golden voice. This Traviata is not as completely dramatically intense as Netrebko/Villazon/Hampson (and to be perfectly honest I probably wouldn't have fallen for this opera so hard if this had been my first)and relatedly it doesn't dramatically highlight the daddy issues nearly as much... but I think it's rather more accessible story-wise, and certainly the best traditionally-staged DVD I know of. (And I actually like the voices better in this one.)
This is the first production I saw that had really good crowd/party scenes -- these are such fun; ensemble scenes are really one of my favorite things. It also highlights the hourglass nature of Act I and Act II: asseekingferret pointed out to me, Act I structurally and musically takes a larger world (the party ensemble that opens the opera) and keeps funneling it down until it ends with Alfredo and Violetta alone -- and really just Violetta singing alone, in her spectacular aria. Act II is the opposite: it starts with Alfredo alone and widens out to include Giorgio Germont in solo arias and duets with all three combinations of two (but only two at a time), and finally ends in what I think is the most wonderful ensemble scene I've ever heard (except maybe the tremendous second act of Nozze di Figaro), where finally we hear all three players in the drama, all of whose musical lines are emphasizing that character's particular crisis (and all three of them are having crises), together with the Baron (so four musical lines, gah!) and whole ensemble and chorus, and now that chorus is simultaneously strongly supporting Violetta at the same time we know that it's the lifestyle that is contributing to her death. (I hear Falstaff has amazing ensemble singing, but I think I might have to work up to that.) Act I and II taken together are just AMAZING. And then Act III (though it is a deathbed scene, which I'm not super excited about) brings it back down again, to Violetta alone (with Annina, sometimes), with the crowd punctuating briefly but not for too long, and the end is those three central players again, with contributions from the doctor and Annina: closing in on what is the most important. (Though in this production, at the very end Fleming runs all around the set in a victory lap before Violetta drops dead, which is hilarious to me.)
Random dumb thing I think about: one of the things that bothers me about the Decker production is how Violetta is in a short strapless dress / thin shift for basically the entire opera, and the men are in full suitwear, and Giorgio Germont is even wearing a coat for some of Act I, Scene 1. I suspect with all of Violetta's acrobatics in that production she's probably okay, but it must be so uncomfortably hot for the men! In this production, although the men (especially Germont) continue to wear a ton of clothes, Violetta is wearing a nice warm long-sleeved dress for Act II and a long-sleeved dressing gown for Act III, so hopefully they just turned down the temperature a lot and everyone was comfortable. (She is wearing shorter-sleeved dresses for the party scenes, but there's not much to be done about that.)
La Traviata, Fleming/Calleja/Hampson 4/5. Royal Opera House, 2009. This is what I would nominate for the best first Traviata to watch. The cast is spectacular. Renée Fleming is Renée Fleming, and as far as I'm concerned is the best whatever-it-is-she's-playing whenever I see her in anything. I mean, she has the most gorgeous voice ever, she's an incredible actress (both vocally and visually) who sells whatever part it is, she is totally beautiful, she seems to have chemistry with everybody! And of course I am a huge fan of Hampson, and this is a great production for him -- he gets to play a rather reserved but ultimately quite sympathetic Giorgio Germont, which plays to his strengths as a subtle actor. Calleja, um, maybe isn't quite as easy on the eyes as the other two (I am super shallow, ok), and more to the point I'm not as convinced by his acting/interpretation -- he seems to tend towards the more angry sort of Alfredo -- but he has a gorgeous golden voice. This Traviata is not as completely dramatically intense as Netrebko/Villazon/Hampson (and to be perfectly honest I probably wouldn't have fallen for this opera so hard if this had been my first)
This is the first production I saw that had really good crowd/party scenes -- these are such fun; ensemble scenes are really one of my favorite things. It also highlights the hourglass nature of Act I and Act II: as
seekingferret pointed out to me, Act I structurally and musically takes a larger world (the party ensemble that opens the opera) and keeps funneling it down until it ends with Alfredo and Violetta alone -- and really just Violetta singing alone, in her spectacular aria. Act II is the opposite: it starts with Alfredo alone and widens out to include Giorgio Germont in solo arias and duets with all three combinations of two (but only two at a time), and finally ends in what I think is the most wonderful ensemble scene I've ever heard (except maybe the tremendous second act of Nozze di Figaro), where finally we hear all three players in the drama, all of whose musical lines are emphasizing that character's particular crisis (and all three of them are having crises), together with the Baron (so four musical lines, gah!) and whole ensemble and chorus, and now that chorus is simultaneously strongly supporting Violetta at the same time we know that it's the lifestyle that is contributing to her death. (I hear Falstaff has amazing ensemble singing, but I think I might have to work up to that.) Act I and II taken together are just AMAZING. And then Act III (though it is a deathbed scene, which I'm not super excited about) brings it back down again, to Violetta alone (with Annina, sometimes), with the crowd punctuating briefly but not for too long, and the end is those three central players again, with contributions from the doctor and Annina: closing in on what is the most important. (Though in this production, at the very end Fleming runs all around the set in a victory lap before Violetta drops dead, which is hilarious to me.)Random dumb thing I think about: one of the things that bothers me about the Decker production is how Violetta is in a short strapless dress / thin shift for basically the entire opera, and the men are in full suitwear, and Giorgio Germont is even wearing a coat for some of Act I, Scene 1. I suspect with all of Violetta's acrobatics in that production she's probably okay, but it must be so uncomfortably hot for the men! In this production, although the men (especially Germont) continue to wear a ton of clothes, Violetta is wearing a nice warm long-sleeved dress for Act II and a long-sleeved dressing gown for Act III, so hopefully they just turned down the temperature a lot and everyone was comfortable. (She is wearing shorter-sleeved dresses for the party scenes, but there's not much to be done about that.)
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Date: 2018-04-16 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-16 05:18 am (UTC)Yeah, as I was watching it I was thinking, "Oh, right, I understand a lot better what ferret was saying!" So I think you'll like it. And Fleming is just fantastic. Rewatching bits tonight, I am wondering what you will think of Germont -- for me he comes down as ultimately sympathetic and feeling for Violetta, but he's also played as very much a stuffed shirt so I could see it being interpreted otherwise.
...and I have sent you email.