{"id":19416,"date":"2014-10-19T15:00:37","date_gmt":"2014-10-19T22:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/?p=19416"},"modified":"2014-10-24T20:10:29","modified_gmt":"2014-10-25T03:10:29","slug":"la-traviata-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/2014\/10\/la-traviata-2\/","title":{"rendered":"La Traviata"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opera (1853)
\nby Giuseppi Verdi<\/p>\n

Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave<\/p>\n

Conductor: Arthur Fagen<\/p>\n

Stage Director: Chas Rader-Shieber
\nSet Designer: Julia Nouin-M\u00e9rat<\/p>\n

Boston Lyric Opera<\/a>
\nBoston, MA<\/p>\n

October 10 – 19, 2014<\/p>\n

With Anya Matanovic (Violetta Val\u00e9ry), Chelsea Basler (Flora Bervoix), David Wadden (Marchese D’Obigny), David Kravitz (Baron Douphol), David Cushing (Doctor Grenville), Jon Jurgens (Gastone de Letoriers), Michael Wade Lee (lfredo Germont), Rachel Hauge (Annina), Omar Najmi (Giuseppi), Weston Hurt (Giorgio Germont), Ron Williams (Messenger), Jeremy Collier (Flora’s Servant)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Anya<\/a>
Anya Matanovic
Photo: Arielle Doneson
Courtesy of Boston Lyric Opera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
An intimate, passionate and beautifully rendered account of the great heartbreaker about a noble courtesan and her ill-fated love affair.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Violetta Val\u00e9ry is a beautiful courtesan who has learned not to take love too seriously until a young, passionate admirer, Alfredo Germont, expresses his devotion and she falls for him. Unfortunately, Alfredo’s father is none too pleased and comes to Violetta to talk her out of the affair. Somehow he does, supposedly on the it’s a bad rep for our family<\/em> score, and she leaves Alfredo who doesn’t understand at all why. But Violetta has consumption which brings things to a head soon enough and everybody gets on the same page before the inevitable comes to pass.<\/p>\n

\"Weston<\/a>
Weston Hurt as Germont
Anya Matanovic as Violetta
in “La Traviata”
Photo: \u00a9 2014 Eric Antoniou
Courtesy of Boston Lyric Opera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Boston Lyric Opera has a history of producing grand opera in an intimate way and the results are generally delightful. This production is no exception. <\/p>\n

With simple, but clever and appealing, sets (designed by Julia Noulin-M\u00e9rat), the BLO pulls off a compelling production in a way that more elaborate opera companies could never do, and the results are very congenial. <\/p>\n

In this case, the first act is quite literally framed, at least partially, by a gilt edged painted masterpiece, and the design recapitulates in the last act quite convincingly. The party scenes are done cleverly, with a raked stage, a table, and a mass of chorus members gesticulating in one way or another, suggesting enormous activity. It works well.<\/p>\n

La Traviata<\/em> (The Fallen Woman) is based on the play La dame aux Cam\u00e9lias<\/em> (1852), adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Though there are large party scenes it this opera, basically there are only three major roles: Violetta, Alfredo and Germont. The intimate setting of the BLO production works particularly well when this sort of small ensemble is the focus and gives a sense of closeness that other more grandiose productions sometimes lack.<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/a>
Michael Wade Lee as Alfredo
Anya Matanovic as Violetta
in “La Traviata”
Photo: \u00a9 2014 Eric Antoniou
Courtesy of Boston Lyric Opera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Violetta here, Anya Matanovic, is delightful. She has a crystal clear voice that does the trick for the demanding range required by the role. She is also a good actress, conveying the giddy sense of indifference required early on, and the devastated, then devotional, stances later on. <\/p>\n

Michael Wade Lee as Alfredo was vocally a little thin at the outset, but that evolved shortly into a richer experience.<\/p>\n

Weston Hurt as Germont was quite compelling and his duet with Violetta in the second act was wonderful. <\/p>\n

The orchestra played decently. There was a little shrillness from the violins at times early on in the high, ever so tenderly fragile, parts, but that didn’t show up as an issue later on.<\/p>\n

– BADMan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Opera (1853)
\nby Giuseppi Verdi
\nLibretto by Francesco Maria Piave
\nBoston Lyric Opera<\/a>
\nBoston, MA
\nOctober 10 – 19, 2014<\/strong>
\nAn intimate, passionate and beautifully rendered account of the great heartbreaker about a noble courtesan and her ill-fated love affair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19416","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-operas","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19416"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19490,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416\/revisions\/19490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bostonartsdiary.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}